


Stranger Beasts

by AntiGravitas



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Demon Summoning, Demons, Hurt/Comfort, Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, Mystery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2019-08-08 03:09:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 58,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16421243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiGravitas/pseuds/AntiGravitas
Summary: Returning to work after being captured by a dark wizard was always going to have its issues. Percival Graves isn't expecting it to be easy, but when unfriendly factions declare him one of Grindelwald's spies, Seraphina saddles him with an independent observer to keep the peace. Except this person is the accidental saviour of New York, Percival Graves' rescuer, and all-around awkward topic of conversation, Newton Scamander. Because Newt is a demon summoner, and Percival has dedicated his life to fighting the creatures his new partner apparently has such an affinity for.A demon summoner AU in which Newt's beasts really are monsters, and Percival Graves must work out why he's so drawn to a man he's certain will one day turn dark, even if currently he's the kindest person he's ever met.





	1. Return

**Author's Note:**

> We’re going demon summoning, friends, so buckle up! Because of that this will be a somewhat darker fic, hence the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" tag and the E-rating, primarily because the monsters are going to be weird and Lovecraftian and hellbent on eating people. They are intended to be creepy. However, I can confirm with absolute certainty that this fic will **not** contain rape, child abuse or gory torture. It's not a dark!Newt fic. It _will_ contain emotional manipulation, blood, fighting, occasional gore, and sex, and will deal with themes of death, uninformed consent, monsters, PTSD and dark magic. If you need to know if a trigger will be present, drop me a mail/Tumblr ask/IM.
> 
> On the other hand it will also contain the promised Gramander, protector!Graves, hurt/comfort, the usual slow burn (but speeded up for once!) and general Newt/Percival getting to know one another fluff. 
> 
> Also, I am indeed still working on ABFEB 2, but this is my Halloween contribution. :]

Later, all he will remember are pale feathers and paler bone, and a cold so deep and endless it is without compare. Percival Graves returns to the world of the living gasping for breath and convinced that the prison that held him was burning with a fire the colour of decay. He struggles to pull himself upright, further into the warmth and golden glow of candlelight, feeling his body shot through with the primal panic of a drowning man. Seraphina Picquery leans forward into the line of his sight and he grasps for her shoulders, even as she takes him by the upper arms and pushes him gently, firmly, back to the floor. 

“Percival,” she says, and there’s something in her voice he’s never heard before. A catch, a weakness, a single crack in the iron facade of composure she’s built up around herself over the years. “Percival, it’s all right, you’re okay now. Relax, lie back. Lie back.”

He obeys, but only because the strength is completely gone out of him, and the room is spinning around him wildly like a whirligig. He can see a white ceiling swaying above, the brass and crystal chandelier of the downstairs sitting room - he’s at home, he’s free- “Grindelwald-” he croaks, and his throat burns with pain.

“We have him,” she soothes him. “He’s in the cells. You’re safe now, Percival, we have you.”

But even as she says it he sees that her attention is divided, that there’s a question in the creasing of her forehead, one that’s not directed at him. He realises then that there’s someone else here with them, a presence at his shoulder, shrouded in the swirl of incense and the scent of something foul burning,  _ Merlin it reeks in here. _

“Yes, it’s- it’s fine. We have him, he’s free.”

The accent is English, the voice thin with exhaustion. Percival twists his head sideways, blinking at the glare of the light around him - so bright after such endless dark! 

“Who-?”

“Hush, Percival. Rest. It’s going to be okay now.” Seraphina leans forward, occluding his view of the room, and the skin of her palm is cool against his forehead. Cool but so full of the warmth and vitality and realness of life. He knows what she’s going to do then, has seen her do it to so many others and he struggles to speak, to pull away, but the tendrils of her magic seep into his body, his eyes close and once more there is nothing but darkness.

  
  


* 

 

The Charity Wilkinson Memorial Hospital for the Magical Citizenry of New York is understaffed and underfunded. Percival Graves finds himself listening to the chatter of the junior healers as they recount this fact in the corridor outside his private room, or over his body as they check his vitals when they think he’s sleeping. He sleeps a lot at the moment. The world has shrunk inwards to encompass nothing more than the bed on which he lies, his body heavy and unresponsive, and the room in which he has been placed. There’s an apparatus behind his head which he is familiar with solely by exposure to his wounded subordinates over the years, and he knows that it is spelled to monitor his breathing, his humours and the fluttering of his pulse. 

He marks the time by the footfalls of the nurses passing by in the corridor on their way to tend to their patients. He knows this wing of the hospital, though he’s never spent any amount of time here himself. The quiet wing, for recuperation and specialist monitoring. They put you here so that you might recover in restful seclusion or die in peace, whichever is the most likely. He is not dying, of that he feels certain. But he is tired, a fatigue that’s bone deep and so profound it feels as though something has been taken from him, some vital part of his physical energy whose loss makes him fear he will never be quite the same again.

Mostly, he sleeps. Although the regimented routine of morning-afternoon-night is lost to him, the healers keep him to a semblance of normalcy. He is woken at eight for breakfast, fed again at midday and a final time in the evening. At least eventually that is the case. Those first days after he is freed from Grindelwald’s prison are a seamless mass of darkness and unpleasant dreaming, broken only by the attention of the healers and their insistent inquiries as to his health and state of awareness. After some time he is able to last longer in the waking world and the first hints of routine are reintroduced. He still sleeps though, long and often. 

Sometimes he wakes in the middle of the night, when all the lights are low and the room is lit only by the emerald glow of the monitoring apparatus behind his head, and the brighter golden glow of the corridor outside, the door left ajar so that the healers might peek in on their rounds. The green light makes him flinch, makes something deep inside him recoil, and for a long, dizzying moment he believes himself back in the prison of darkness and bone and deep, fathomless cold. The idea passes in moments, but it leaves him sweating and shivering in the damp tangle of his bed sheets, unable to settle.

His dreams during this time are strange. He remembers little of them save for an intense and paralysing dread, a weight of horror so profound he thinks that his mind refuses to remember in order to shield itself. He doesn’t attempt to pry, shocked to the core by the magnitude of his own reluctance, but his thoughts nibble constantly at the edges of the issue, ever returning to the idea of what he doesn’t recall. Sometimes, when he drifts on the edge of wakefulness he thinks that he is not alone, that there is someone there in the room with him, a tall figure that watches from the shadows at the side of his bed, silent and strange. On those occasions he can never bring himself fully awake, no matter how hard he tries, and later there’s never any indication that anyone had ever been there.

It is two weeks after he is first brought in that Seraphina comes to visit him. By this time Percival is fully awake and beginning to feel the strain of confinement. News has been scarce, the healers firm in their assertion that they are unable to provide any details beyond the fact that Picquery is still President, Grindelwald has been apprehended, and life goes on much as it always does. He’s been expecting aurors for some days now, but that his first visitor is the President herself speaks volumes.

Seraphina stands in the doorway of his room for a long time before he notices her. When he does, he pushes himself up on to his elbows, aware suddenly that he is dressed in hospital robes and looking entirely the part of the helpless invalid. He catches a frown darken her brow before she schools it back to her usual professional cool.

“Don’t,” she says. “Not on my behalf.”

Regardless, Percival levers himself upright, pushing the pillows up behind his back for support. He’s weak from bedrest, not incapable, and he won’t be found wanting even now. “President,” he says formally.

“Percival,” she replies. “Stop that.”

For a moment they look at one another, all the unspoken concerns and horrors of the last few months making the air between them thick with tension. There are a thousand things he wants to ask, to say, but the foremost among them is but one. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I let him in.”

Seraphina draws in a deep breath, slow and bracing, then says, “Deliberately?”

Despite the logic of it, the question still takes him completely by surprise. “No! I was a fool, Sera. I thought he was, I don’t know. I thought he was someone else. Just a man I met at the club house. A good conversationalist, a person worth debating. He was- something else entirely. I’m a damned fool.”

“Did you know it was him?”

“No,” he says, aghast. Then, seeing the deliberate cool of her expression, the calculation in her eyes, he realises that this must, somehow, be the prime concern. What the hell has Grindelwald done in the time between their meeting in the clubhouse and now to provoke such suspicion? Professionally of course he understands the need to explore all avenues, but for it to be the first and most pressing concern? “ _ No,” _ he stresses firmly, for her sake. “I didn’t know his identity. He gave me a false name and he was wearing someone else’s face. I-” he stops, because something in her expression has changed, just minutely. 

He sees her glance sideways and nod to someone, then she steps inside the room and closes the door behind her. When she moves further into the glow of the bedside lamp he realises just how tired and worn she looks, as though the weight of all her years of service have suddenly come upon her all at once. With a flick of her wand she draws one of the stuffed chairs across the room towards her, and seats herself at his bedside.

“I need you to listen to me,” she says, very seriously. “I’ll answer your questions after I’m done, but you will listen until I’m finished, do you understand?”

From long years experience of Seraphina Picquery he understands that her tone is not intended to rile or insult. With those who can take it, she’s a direct woman, and he regards it as a sign of her respect for him that she makes no attempt to coddle. Still though, despite the calmness of her voice as she recounts the happenings of the last three months -  _ three months -  _ each sentence hits him like a physical blow. The dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, demon summoner and practitioner of the blackest arts, has been impersonating him for three months. Living as him, speaking as him,  _ for him _ , working his way towards some unknown goal, insinuating himself into one particular investigation- “The Voidborn,” Percival says. “We never found him, we, he- did he?”

Seraphina stares at him, and for a moment it looks like she’ll rebuke him for his interruption, but then she relents. “He tried. The boy is dead now.”

It had been the only expected outcome. Still it saddens him. So rare, so vulnerable, perhaps they might have saved him. Seraphina is not done though. “There was another involved,” she says slowly.

It is not the first time Percival has heard of Newton Scamander. The youngest son of the Scamanders, seldom spoken of, at least not in polite circles. He knows the older brother in a professional sense, and has done his best over the years not to judge without evidence. But of course, Percival’s been in his line of work for over two decades now, and as far as he’s concerned, folk who walk the path the youngest Scamander has chosen head inevitably into the dark. For Newton Scamander, younger brother of the war hero Theseus, is a demon summoner. 

He listens in grim silence as Seraphina recounts the battle in the station, the death of the Voidborn, and the capture of Gellert Grindelwald. Newton Scamander plays no small part in that, and, he is surprised to find out, in his own rescue. 

“I believed he would be best placed to track you down. He has...an affinity for the void beasts that I’ve never seen before.”

Percival looks at her strangely. Even amidst the shock of such profound revelations coming one after another this statement is out of the ordinary. It’s been eight hundred years since Mordered tore the veil between worlds and dragged the planet into tortuous alignment with the outer Voids. In all that time demon summoners, those with the ability to reach through to the other planes and contact the dread beasts that live there, have turned from reviled outcasts to a necessary component of a nation’s magical security. After all, it’s their particular arcane knowledge that can bring the beasts under control and even use them against the rest of their brethren. And yet it’s been centuries since that dark age had its dawn, and these days the bloodlines that produce a demon summoner have become thin, even as the regulation of their craft has become tighter.

Of course, there are always exceptions. Newton Scamander ties himself to no government and no group. Just a lone summoner working independently, clearing up demonic incursions and attending exorcisms. Not illegal, just very unusual.

Seraphina holds his gaze unwaveringly, and Percival shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

“To track you, Percival. To track Grindelwald’s magic. Find that and we’d find you. He’d locked you away, kept you hidden. I knew time was running out to reach you, and Mr Scamander was the only option left. He was the only one with the subtlety and skill to track a summoner of Grindelwald’s expertise.”

There’s something in her eyes that makes Percival hesitate, even through the numbness in his body and the sluggishness of his thoughts that must be shock. He knows Seraphina better than he knows anyone else, and that expression - what is it? Is it pity? Remorse? Three months. Three fucking months. The damage Grindelwald could have done. The things that bastard must have seen, have gotten access to. There will be so much to repair, so much to make safe again.  _ Three months. _

“I want to come back,” he says, quickly before the chance is lost. The sheer volume of work that will need doing to secure the secrets of MACUSA, to track down exactly what has been broached - it’s staggering. He needs to get back to work,  _ right now _ .

Seraphina is still looking at him, that strange gleam in her eye. He’s not sure what to make of it and knows that if he missteps now, pushes too hard, he risks being turned down, even shut out completely. “Sera-”

“You must give it time, Percival,” she says, and he shakes his head, knowing that to press is the worst choice, the one that makes him look far too desperate.

“Sera-”

“ _ Time, _ ” she stresses, and he bites his lip.

It is some moments before he can bring himself to reply. “Time.”

Her gaze does not soften, but something in her relaxes, as though at a victory achieved or a suspicion confirmed. “It wasn’t a no, Percival,” she says eventually. “But you must wait.”

He had thought that he would have questions, a thousand of them, but every worry, every query he’d had in the days leading up to this meeting have faded, drowned beneath the knowledge that it has been three months since he last trod this world, three months of imprisonment. Three months. And no-one had even noticed.

“Get some rest, Percival,” the President says. 

Against the horror that prickles the skin on his neck and seeps ice into his muscles, he has no defence. Nor against the lines of strain that cross Seraphina’s skin that have never been there before, that must have been put there by his failing and the consequences thereof. 

She leaves him to think alone in the gloom of his hospital room, far from the rest of the world, to recover or to fade away. It’s some time before he notices the shadow of the two aurors that stand outside his door - watchful, silent sentinels - but even their presence gives him no comfort.

It is a long time before he can sleep again.

 

*   
  


Percival returns to work faster than he or anyone else had anticipated. He walks into the Woolworth Building a free man, legally absolved of any wrongdoing, having pleaded his case before a private tribunal and been fully cleared. He had expected to lose his position, but the half-circle of grim faces, every one of whom was familiar to him, had, to a person, cast their vote in his favour. The relief had almost knocked him from his feet.

And now he walks the familiar marble floors of MACUSA’s HQ with a confidence born of long political experience rather than any genuine self-assurance. His heels tap out a regular rhythm and his fine coat, freshly laundered and altered only slightly to fit his now somewhat thinner frame, lifts behind him like the robes his ancestors would once have worn. He is the picture of pride and restored power, yet on the inside he trembles with uncertainty.

When Red pulls open the elevator doors, bowing in the derisively civil way only a goblin can achieve, he seems somehow more muted and respectful than normal, and that is the first indication that Percival has of how the day will play out. 

Every member of the Major Investigations team stands to welcome their leader home. They salute him in a silence that’s so taut it’s almost painful to move through, and he only keeps the wince off his face by virtue of many years of practice. 

“At ease,” he murmurs as he forces himself to walk slowly through the midst of their desks rather than skirting around the edge, until he comes to the centre, where he pauses and looks around at his gathered senior aurors.

“The past is behind us,” he says quietly, so that those at the edges must strain to hear him. “But we are going to be paying for it for a very long time. I suggest we work together to make that recovery as smooth a process as possible.”

He looks around, meeting as many eyes as he can, then nods once, sharply. “That’s it. Get on with your jobs.”

It’s a long time after the door to his office has closed behind him before the chatter in the bullpen returns to anything above a whisper. 

 

*

 

Even though he knows that he shouldn’t, Percival spends that first day locked inside his office. Picquery will be by later to show her official support for his return, but before that he needs to find his centre of balance again. He starts by recasting every ward in the place. 

The moment he’d entered his office he’d felt the unfamiliar vibration of someone else’s magic. Another mage, in fact an entire team of them, has been over this place with a fine-tooth comb, looking for spying charms, traps or anything the dark wizard could have left behind. And once they had cleared out, someone else, someone very powerful, had laid down another set of protective wards to replace the ones that had already been there.That person’s magic chimes a high, clear note when Percival tests it with a nip of power from the tip of his wand, evidence of a casting so fine that even in this situation he is impressed. The work of a Phoenix Knight, if he is not mistaken. It would make sense for one of their order to have been over this place, considering the nature of the dark wizard that had been here.

After that, he sits down with the records and the reports of the last three months, and loses himself in the intricacies and mundanity of their minutiae. 

Everything is as he already knows it to have been. Gellert Grindelwald had been as clever as his reputation declared him. All the way to the very end there is not a single indication of anything amiss, not a hair out of place. His impersonation of Percival had been thorough and deeply unnerving in its fluency. Percival pauses for a long time over the sheets of one report, thinking of those few, terrible days when he had been held awake in the grasp of the dark wizard. He has trained to withstand torture of course, any mage in his position has been given the training, but Gellert had been so clever, and despite the knowledge that  _ something _ must have happened, Percival does not remember anything of what had passed between them. He remembers only cold, and dark, and a horror so intense the echo of it still makes him sweat. 

He stands then, slapping the papers down on his desk, and paces for a few moments, until he realises how unhinged the action would seem to an onlooker, and then he forces himself to sit down once more. The reports in front of him are filled with notes on the Barebones boy, the Voidborn that had so obsessed Grindelwald. Everything the man had done whilst impersonating Percival had led inevitably to that fatal confrontation beneath the city streets. 

Voidborn. Black channeler, demon puppet, cursed child - there are many names for what Credence Barebones had been. Victim should have been one of them, Graves thinks. Idly he flips through the more recent reports of events that took place after Grindelwald’s capture and during Percival’s time in hospital. He’s still thinking of the boy they failed when his eye is caught by a particular document. He slides it out from its protective cover, flipping through the thin sheets paper-clipped to its corner. 

_ Newton Scamander. _ Confirmation of stipend for works carried out, allocation of short-stay accommodation in the general bunkhouse, allowance for private rental of living quarters with open-ended term, conditions of employment for consultancy work. Percival flips through the pages with a deepening frown. The man is still in town, and still, for some unknown reason, in MACUSA’s employ. This doesn’t make any sense to him - they have their own Phoenix-certified summoners, two of them, neither of them capable of anything more than standard capture, control and interrogate, but both perfectly suited for auror-level dark summoner countermeasures and both of them alive and functioning. Why then is Scamander still hanging around?

Graves leans back in his chair, perplexed. He’s still puzzling over the chain of authorisation when there’s a sharp rap at his door. He has all of a second to compose himself and stuff the papers away before Seraphina sweeps in. 

“Percival,” she says, and he can already tell from the tone of her voice and the still open door behind her, that this is a show for any listening ears outside. Ever the politician she may be, but he trusts her judgement in this. “I thought I’d drop by to welcome you back.”

“President,” he murmurs, “Please, come in, take a seat. Coffee?”

He serves her coffee, black and sweet, as he knows she prefers it, and for ten minutes they talk of thin air and niceties, until the President judges that a good enough impression has been made, and the door to his office is once more closed firmly to the outside world. 

“How are you doing?” she asks him immediately, and now her tone has lost its warmth and any generosity that might have been there. It’s a welcome change if he’s honest, the maternal care for his well-being doesn’t hang well on Seraphina. This sharp interest is far closer to what he is accustomed. 

Graves nods slowly, with a twitch of his lips into a brief, cold smile. “There’s a lot to do,” he allows.

Seraphina stares at him evenly, assessing his mood and the steel in his spine. She must have faith in him to have restored him to his position, but even she can’t be sure of her choice. Don’t you worry, he thinks. I’m not going to break. “Can you do it?” she asks.

“I will. I have to.” 

They’ve known one another long enough to both smile grimly at that. 

“I’ve done what I can to calm the waters, Percival,” she continues. “But I can’t work miracles. You’ll need to make some allowances. Play the game. Smile for the cameras. For Morgana’s sake try and look humble for once in your life, you need the public’s support right now.”

He smiles wryly in return. “I know how to play the game, Sera.”

She snorts softly. “There’s something else. I’m still hearing whispers from the usual quarters; there’s a small but significant group trying to push the angle that you’re still in Grindelwald’s thrall. They lost the battle to make you look complicit from the start, so now they’re trying for unsuspecting dupe. To that end,  _ to that end, _ ” she stresses as he makes to speak, “I’ve provided an independent observer to work with you. You’re to work with him,  _ visibly,  _ on restoring the damage to the city wards that Grindelwald caused searching for the Voidborn. Just for a month or two, until confidence is restored.”

Percival takes a deep breath, bringing his pride and his temper back under control. Really, he ought to have expected something like this. It’s not unreasonable for people to be concerned about his integrity, even if they have no proof of his wrongdoing. “All right,” he breathes. “Who is it?”

Seraphina nods, one eye on the tension coiling in his shoulders, then rises to her feet. “I’ll bring him in.”

Percival hardly has time to get to his feet and smooth his jacket down, a frown on his face as Seraphina pulls open the door to his office and extends a beckoning finger to someone waiting on the benches out of sight. Annoyed at this sudden turn of events, and by her lack of allowance for any need of his to prepare for such a meeting, Graves tries without much success to smooth the irritation from his features.

Picquery stands aside and turns to face Percival so that she might take in his reaction to the man that now stands in his office doorway. The newcomer is tall, his posture poor, as he hunches slightly, his eyes obscured by a thick tangle of a fringe from beneath which he peers with cautious curiosity. 

“Hello, Mr Graves,” he says, and some puzzle piece inside Percival’s mind clicks into place at the soft, English accent. “My name is Newt,” the man says. “Newton Scamander - summoner. Pleased to meet you.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've gotten this far - thank you! In terms of world-building, all will be explained by the end. 
> 
> I have the other 10 chapters fully planned out, as ever, and a lot of enthusiasm for this one, so I hope you enjoy it. :] Thanks again for reading!


	2. Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night-time is the best time for introductions. Everyone has ulterior motives. Dinner with the sisters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this madness? An update already? Yes, this is me forcing myself to cut chapters down into reasonable chunks rather than chapters the length of small novellas.

The stars are scattered bright that night, the air crisp and clear with the last bite of winter. Earlier on a late afternoon rain had turned the city’s fine layer of snow to a hard ice that now coats the sidewalks and makes them treacherous. Far above, standing on the roof of one of the new high-rises, Percival Graves looks out across his city and breathes deep. The heating charms in his coat and gloves are the only thing keeping sensation in his extremities, and the lungful of cold air is enough that it makes him cough, and yet the freedom to do it lifts his mood and fills him with gladness. He turns from the view to regard the figure crouched in the centre of the flat rooftop, fussing with something at his feet.

When he’d arrived at work this morning, first day back on the job, the last thing Percival had been expecting to do with his evening was to still be out working this close to midnight. At least any thoughts he’d entertained of working late had involved the comfort and security of his office. It’s searingly cold up here and the hasty meal he’d had brought up from the staff canteen at eight feels hours distant. And of course, he is not alone.

Seraphina had given him no time to protest the introduction of Newton Scamander into his life. After the initial exchange of pleasantries had been made, she’d dismissed the man back to his boarding house on the understanding that he and Percival would begin work together this very evening. Percival had been given no say in the matter, had struggled to even insert a word sideways into her planning, and as soon as the door had closed behind the man she’d been quick to begin her own escape.

“But, what the hell, Sera?” he’d exclaimed once they were alone. “Why him of all people? He’s a goddamn swerver.”

She’d given him a grim smile in return. “He’s not a swerver, Percival. He’s _unaffiliated._ I recommend you pick up a broadsheet and see what they have to say about him. Right now, collared or not, that man is the darling of the press. The public adore him. He _saved_ the city. A _demon summoner_ saved the city. And what’s more, he saved it from the worst dark wizard we’ve seen in decades, the worst fallen summoner there’s been since Mordered himself. Do you know how much trouble we can avoid with this? There are sixteen full-time summoners working for MACUSA right now, and forty-two sanctioned summoners running MACUSA-licensed operations around the country. If the public turn against them because of what Grindelwald did, it undermines our authority and causes civil unrest. If this man, this _free agent_ can turn the tide of that aggression back on itself he’s doing us more than just a favour.”

He understands her angle, of course he does. But still, it’s galling to be put under observation and almost laughably ridiculous that it be by the sort of person he’s spent no small portion of his career hunting down. _Swerver_ , he thinks. The only thing that’s saved you from being dragged up on charges is your family ties and the fact that Britain’s lax in its control of your kind. That MACUSA-controlled territories have some of the strictest rules related to summoners is not something Percival loses sleep over.

Scamander, “Newt” as he calls himself, is still bent low over the VISP sigil burnt into the rooftop. It’s an intricately formed counter-incursion ward, one of a network scattered across the city, all carefully tuned to act as demonic deterrents. As a professional demon summoner Newt has a specialist's understanding of how to calibrate the things, and because of that he’s been brought on board to confirm that no trace of Grindelwald’s interference with the city’s security wards remains.

Percival’s face is grim as he watches the man tracing query charms into the air with the tip of his wand. He’s awkward, even now, and Percival can feel that he has only half an eye for the work he’s carrying out. The rest of his attention is fixed on Percival himself. He’s wary and cautious, and Percival hadn’t liked the way the man had looked at him during their first awkward introduction such a short time ago. He’d had the look of someone with more than a simple polite interest in their subject. It had felt like an assessment, but one with some unknown intent behind it, and Percival’s still not sure what that might have been.

Summoners are a rare breed. True summoners, ones that can actually draw demons through from the Void and successfully control them are even rarer. This man, according to all the reports he’s read, is a member of that most uncommonly skilled group. In the US, all demon summoners must be licensed and working, at least in part, for MACUSA. Newt though, Newt has no affiliation to any government, and although he may have been certified by them, no ties to the Phoenix Knights either. _Swerver_ , Percival thinks again. Uncollared swerver, probably halfway down the path to the dark already.

There’s a single, subtle chime that shivers in the air, like the softest bell, or the sound dawn might make, and a blossom of light glows beneath Scamander’s hand, the VISP sigil alight with a blue fire so pale it is almost white. For a second the glow holds, and then fades away without trace, leaving the rooftop dark and shadowed once more.

“That’s it,” Newt says. “That one is correctly aligned.”

Percival nods. He has to give it to the man, he has a fluency with VISP magic he’d only ever expect to see from a Phoenix. “And how many more do you expect to do tonight?”

Newt pushes himself to his feet, and Percival takes a step back, having drawn closer to watch. The summoner runs a hand through his fringe and something about the movement makes Percival suspicious. He lights the tip of his own wand with a small lumos spell and lifts the light so that he can more clearly see the other man’s expression. In the dim glow the summoner looks washed out and pale, but it’s the beading of sweat on his forehead that truly gives his condition away. Graves’ lips thin into a line as the other man turns hurriedly away, reaching for his battered travel case.

“Should we be continuing at all, Mr Scamander?”

“Hm, it’s ah, it’s Newt, please. I think. And yes, we should. I can, if that’s what you’re asking, Mr Graves.”

“You look ill,” Graves says bluntly, unimpressed by any false bravado. “The network is too precious to risk miscalibration by mistake brought on by fatigue.”

Newt turns back to look at him then, and for the first time there’s something of steel in his expression. He gives Percival the smallest, briefest of smiles. “You have experience calibrating VISP setups then, Mr Graves?”

Percival won’t give him an inch on this, and returns his stare coolly. “I have no skill myself with such things, but I have enough common sense to know that a job done in poor health is likely as not one that must be repeated.”

Newt doesn’t hold his gaze, not truly. He looks up and sideways at Graves, a curious posture for such a tall man, one that allows him to look without being forward about it. The antagonism is all in his tone, and this still remains as he replies, “I’m not ill, Mr Graves. VISP calibration is draining because it requires such concentration. We have another two sigils to balance tonight to complete the set for this area, and I’m aware that it’s now past midnight, but if they’re not aligned within short time of one another between the hours of ten and two then they will require much more work to restore. Of course, I understand you’re very recently back to work, so if you are feeling the strain then I don’t mind if you retire.”

 _You cocky bastard,_ Graves thinks, amused despite himself by the man’s cheek. Newt offers him a smile, and it’s exactly the sort of innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt expression Graves has seen on the face of con-artists everywhere. “No, Mr Scamander,” he says in return, just as smoothly. “Don’t concern yourself with my health. Let’s get on and get this done.”

They move across the night time city in short bursts of apparition, stopping from time to time to allow Newt to test the unseen ethereal network of the VISP wards before they reach the anchoring sigils. By the time they’ve moved on to the last of the two Percival is feeling more than just the drag of a late night. Despite the heating charms in his clothing he’s bitterly cold, and he stands just out of the line of Newt’s sight so that the man will not see him shivering should he happen to glance his way. There’s a bone-deep fatigue in his body, and were he alone he would have returned home long since. As it is, feeling his head swimming unpleasantly from the exertion of repeated apparition, he sits cautiously on the low wall of one flat rooftop, ready to jump to his feet at a single querying look from his companion.

And thus he sits, wickedly cold from the biting night air, his backside slowly going numb from the chill of frozen bricks creeping through his coat. He listens in silence to the gentle murmuring of the summoner as he works, and wonders again what the hell Seraphina had really been thinking. Of course he understands all too well the political manoeuvring she’d claimed, but there’s something off about this whole setup. Tying the fate of her Director’s reputation to a foreign summoner, an eccentric no less, saviour of the city or not, seems unwise. Illogical and unnecessary one might say. But for the life of him he cannot unpick her true reasoning. Perhaps it’s the cold, or the remnants of his anger that’s slowing his thinking, but had someone told Percival Graves a year ago that no less than his life, reputation and career would hang squarely from the tip of a summoner’s wand, he’d have thought them insane.

Finally, Newt sits back on his heels, the glow of a successful sigil calibration fading again to nothing, and breathes out a long, tired breath. “That’s it,” he says, and his voice is thin with fatigue. “For tonight anyway. We should get some rest.”

Percival looks up at him from where he’d been staring down at the rooftop, elbows on his thighs, hands hanging between his knees, and makes no move to rise. “Tell me, Mr Scamander,” he says. “Why am I out here with you tonight?”

Newt turns awkwardly to look at him, one hand going to the frosty rooftop to keep his balance. He looks startled, and Percival thinks to himself that he’s scored a hit with that question. “Because President Picquery ordered it, Mr Graves,” he says, and turns quickly away, fussing with his case.

Percival watches him snap the clasps open and stash away his set of crystal calibration wands. The interrogator in Graves tells him that the man is clearly ill at ease with this line of questioning. “You’ve been working on these wards for the last three weeks without me though,” he muses. “Why do you now need my supervision?”

Newt pauses, then slowly and resolutely snaps the lid of his case closed and resets the locks. Percival watches him with interest, despite the exhaustion pulling at his body and the unpleasant headache that’s taken root in his skull. Rising to his feet, case in hand, Newt looks up at the stars scattered above, his breath pluming on the air. “Because I am an unaffiliated summoner in a foreign land, Mr Graves. What is it you people call us? ‘Swervers’, I think. Summoners who have ducked their responsibilities in favour of personal gain or the call of the Void.”

Percival can hear the undertone of something hard in the other man’s voice, poorly concealed beneath his polite manner. The stiffness of the summoner’s spine tells him that he’s struck a nerve. He presses on, “And yet,” he says. “If that’s the case, why are you not travelling with a Knight? Isn’t that the tradition in Europe? You work for the Ministry or you take vows and work with the holy Phoenix?”

Even in the pale moonlight Percival can just barely see the tilt of Newt’s smile. It’s small and there’s something bitter and knowing about it. “They’re not holy, Mr Graves. Just gifted in a particular manner,” the summoner replies softly. “And must I remind you, despite popular myth there is no legal requirement for a licensed summoner to travel with a Knight, or even operate under their protection or guidance.”

Percival smiles grimly. He knows, and yet it sounds like a technicality to him. It’s a rare summoner that doesn’t welcome the protective presence of a mage whose very magic repels the Void, to say nothing of their political sway. “And so here we are,” Graves says. “You and I, checking wards in the middle of the night.”

Newt does turn to face him then, and masked by the gloom Percival thinks that the man is finally meeting his gaze. “I think, Mr Graves, that we are here for each other. If I am a foreign Void summoner, then I am one that’s currently in favour. And you are, without meaning to be rude sir, currently not. If either of us is here to watch, then we’re here to watch one another. And I think, I would hope, that in that perhaps we can work together. After all, there’s another two months of calibration before we’re done.”

A long silence falls after Newt stops speaking, and in the starlit gloom the two men regard one another with frank appraisal. They may not be able to clearly see one another’s faces, but by their posture alone the tension is made tangible. And then, despite himself Graves finds his lips twisting into an unexpected smile. He’d misjudged the man perhaps, such resolve had seemed unlikely. Still, Newt is a summoner, and a lone one at that, and such people are famed for the necessary strength of their will.

“All right, Mr Scamander,” he says, low and amused. “I’ll give you that. You watch me and I watch you, and I suppose somehow we get through to the end with both our careers intact.”

“That is the hope, Mr Graves,” Newt replies. “That is indeed the hope.”

They pack up then, some semblance of an understanding beginning to establish itself between them, and bidding goodnight to the bitter cold of the early February New York skyline, they take their leave of one another and head for home.

  


*

  


Percival takes it upon himself to speak to every member of his team in that first week of his return. Some of them, like Joseph Crane, are slow to speak, still wearing the scars of their own perceived betrayal of him, and in their gazes he can see that they’re yet to fully come to terms with the magnitude of the department’s failing. Others, like Sophia and Astrid Guerrero, are withdrawn and quiet, watchful and wary of him in a way he’s never before seen. It makes something inside of him flinch so badly that he must spend a moment just rearranging the papers on his desk to hide his discomfort before he can look them in the eyes again.

And still others are white hot in their rage. Hwang Yeom and Marcus Black are ferociously angry, their rage directed not at him but outwards at everyone and everything else. They will need watching for the time being, he knows that, but for now he allows his two most prized field aurors have their heads and pities the dark wizard that crosses their path.

There are thirty aurors to get through in that first week alone, but early on, the day after his first nighttime outing with Scamander, he summons the eldest of the Goldstein sisters to his office, having refreshed his reading of her report and braced himself as best he can for the meeting.

“Tina,” he says, rising to greet her. “Please, sit down.”

Tina Goldstein looks different. Reinstated as an auror barely a week after Grindelwald’s capture, she’s lost no time in turning her life back around. It’s not just the outfit though, although that in itself is metamorphosis enough. Beyond the stylish cut of her new suit, there’s something cool and self-contained in her expression, and a confidence to her mannerisms that he’s never before seen. It would be crass to comment on her transformation, and so he lets it slide, trusting to her intelligence to understand that he is reaching out to her on a personal level. He is not good with such things, not for his own sake at least.

“Tina,” he says, after a brief discussion of her new role. “I understand that you were instrumental in the capture of Grindelwald, and it’s because of that you’ve been fast-tracked to the Major Crimes team. It’s well-deserved, I want you to know that.”

“Thank you, sir,” she breathes, and for just a second there’s a hint of the awkward young woman he remembers from a scant three months ago. He gives her a brief smile, and wonders if it’s too soon to ask what he needs to know.

But who else can he turn to? Tina Goldstein, according to the reports, is the person currently closest to Newton Scamander, and what’s more the only one in the man’s very small circle of friends to which Percival has immediate access. “Tina,” he says again. “I want you to tell me, in your own words, what you think of Mr Newton Scamander.”

She stares at him blankly for a second, and then gives the tiniest shake of her head. “He’s a good man, sir,” she says. “A very good man. He’s just misunderstood is all. He can be awkward and, well, he doesn’t always follow the rules, but he tries. He really gets things done.”

“You’re fond of him then?” he hazards, and she blushes, just slightly. Ah, he thinks. Like that, is it?

Gathering herself, Tina straightens and gives him a smile that tells him more of the story than any words could. “Mr Scamander is a professional, sir, in all regards. Although he may not always come across as one, he’s really quite a genius. I-” she hesitates, searching his expression for how to proceed, then appears to come to some internal decision. “Newt- he’s my friend. I view him as a friend, Mr Graves, sir. Without him, we would have lost more than just the Voidborn.”

Her voice cracks slightly on the word, and Percival dips his head, and murmurs, “Credence, yes.”

“Yes,” she replies softly. “Credence. Grindelwald, well, we don’t know what he wanted with him, but I think we would have lost all of New York had he gotten whatever it was he wanted from him. And, we’d never have gotten you back, sir. I’m sure of that.”

He’s read enough reports to have heard the entire sorry tale, and read between all the lines too. Percival knows the story of how Newt saved New York from Gellert Grindelwald almost as well as if he’d been there himself. Remarkable the tricks a powerful summoner can pull off if he can tame the right demon. Even as far as causing an entire city full of no-majs to dream away their memories as nothing but nightmares. Powerful, if subtle, magic indeed.

Percival leans back in his chair and regards Tina frankly for a long few moments. She returns his gaze with a confidence he doesn’t remember her ever having had. “You trust him?” he asks softly.

“Yes, sir,” she replies immediately. Her voice is firm and unwavering, not a brash assertion, but a conviction that is deeply held. “Absolutely. Newton Scamander is one of the best men- probably the best man, I have ever met.”

It surprises Percival to hear her say it. The Tina he knew could be a little too prone to hero worship at times, but she was ultimately a level-headed girl, and to hear her come out with such plain admiration for someone so far from the upper echelons of authority is unusual. He dismisses her with his thanks not long after, and spends the rest of the afternoon deep in thought.

  


*

  


“I swear, he’s a beast to work with. I’ve faced down Void fiends less ferocious.”

Queenie laughs lightly, the sound almost lost beneath the cheerful spritz of music coming from the new wireless in the corner, and across the dining table Tina rolls her eyes. She flicks the tip of her wand and the music quietens enough for them to talk. “He asked me about you today, Newt,” she says, beginning to lay out the cutlery for dinner.

“Oh Merlin, did he?” Newt asks despairingly, and leans back in his chair with an anguished expression.

“Teenie told him all about you!” Queenie puts in brightly, and then engages in a brief battle for control of the volume dial with her sister.

“Oh, Tina, you didn’t, did you? What did you say?” Newt’s expression is pained, and Tina shakes her head at his grimace, even as she glares at her sister.

“I just said the truth, Newt. That you’d helped to save the city, and that you’re the reason we found him again at all. I didn’t go into any detail, and he didn’t ask me to.”

“Then why was he asking you anything at all?” Newt replies crossly, taking the cutlery that Tina pushes into his hands and laying his side of the table.

“I suppose he thinks I know you better than he does. I can’t imagine why,” she replies tartly, then turns away to fetch the plates.

Queenie leans in as she passes en route to the stove. “He’s trying to work out how to deal with being put under observation by a non-MACUSA-controlled summoner. He’s _embarrassed_ , honey. Powerful men like that don’t like being reined in.”

“ _Queenie,_ ” Tina says sharply. “Don’t read my mind.”

“I’m not reading your mind, Teenie you goose, I’m just saying what everyone already knows. Mr Graves is like a cat that’s fallen off the table, all fluffed up and hoping no-one noticed he tripped over his own tail. Don’t worry, Newt, honey, he’ll get used to the idea soon enough. You just need to give him some time.”

Dinner that night is a pleasant affair, despite the news of Tina’s interrogation by the Director. “It wasn’t really an interrogation, Newt,” she assures him. “He was just trying to work out where everything and everyone fits in after, well, you know.”

And Newt does know. Newt knows only too well the suspicions aurors have of mages such as he. Men like Percival Graves spend their entire lives seeing only the worst that humanity has to offer, and as such tend towards an unrelentingly grim outlook on life and its inhabitants. Regardless of his concerns he lets the sisters work their own very specific brand of magic on him, lifting his spirits and warming his heart with their goodwill and concern for his well-being. It’s been such a long time since he was able to truly relax and just be himself with people, and he’s loathe to let anything ruin the time he can spend with them.

Afterwards, Tina sees him to the door while Queenie sets the cleaning up charms in motion. “Thank you for the wireless,” she says to him. “Queenie’s probably going to drive me insane with it, but at least she’s happy I suppose.”

Newt grins up at her from beneath his fringe and gives a little half-shrug. “I know what she’s like for Muggle gadgets, all the latest toys.”

“I hope it wasn’t too expensive,” Tina replies, and Newt waves the question away.

“It was nothing. Look, Tina, I don’t want to pry but-” he trails off, uncertain how to go about asking without souring the mood.

Tina leans on the door frame, pulling the door closed just a little way so that they’re shielded from the inside a fraction more. “But…?”

He winces, then looks up at her sideways. “Did he, did Mr Graves say anything about, well, about Credence?”

Tina blinks at him, then frowns just slightly. “No,” she replies slowly. “No, he didn’t. What were you expecting him to ask, Newt?”

Newt sighs and shakes his head, both relieved and frustrated. “Nothing. Nothing, I just-” A glance up at her face tells him he’s going to have to do better than that and he grimaces again. “I just wondered if they’d gotten any closer to working out what Grindelwald was up to with him, is all.”  
  
Tina relaxes visibly and Newt realises that he’s gotten away with his line of questioning. “No, well, at least not that anyone’s said anyway. Mr Graves, he- well, I guess he just doesn’t really have much to say about him. I mean, you know he was the one who ordered the investigation into the Second Salemers right at the start, but with what happened I guess they’ve taken him off that case. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I suppose,” he replies. “Look anyway, it’s neither here nor there. Thank you for dinner, it was lovely as ever. And I suppose I’ll be along at the end of the week to help you both move?”

“You betcha,” Tina grins. “Don’t think you’re getting out of any heavy lifting, Mr Scamander, just because you’re famous now. We expect you to pitch in and get us out of here as fast as possible!”

“I’ll be here,” he promises. “Nine a.m. on the dot. Friday, right?”

“Friday,” she agrees.

When Newt finds his way back to the street it’s coming up to ten and the night is already bitterly cold. It makes him wish for the somewhat milder climate of his family’s estate in Devon, or at least the warmth of his apartment in London. New York sees far more snow than he’s accustomed to, and somewhat more than he wants to experience. Newt’s not really a fan of the cold.

Turning south he slips into the nearest alleyway and then disappears into a leap of apparition that takes him halfway across the city in a single bound. He’s been here long enough now that he’s mapped a veritable network of spots across the city to allow him easy access to almost any area. This one is a small spot on someone’s rooftop far to the south of Brooklyn where he can look out across the gleaming nighttime cityscape. He settles himself with his back to a familiar chimney stack, feeling the heat rising from inside and scenting the wood-smoke from within. Then, lifting his palm to the sky, he whispers the name of his familiar and lets a sliver of his power slip into the summoning.

The creature that manifests in his gloved palm is slick and dark, the shadow of a rat, or a mole, or something somewhere in between. Its skin is velvet-soft, but its claws are black obsidian and were he to let them touch his skin they would burn cold enough to sear his flesh. He lets the creature sniff the air, tasting the scent of this plane and the richness of its many potentials, then clicks his tongue for its attention. The tiny Void demon turns its black eyes on him and chitters with a noise like the shifting of insect wings, and Newt reaches into his pocket and draws out a single, silver sickle. He can see the reflected gleam of the coin in the little demon’s eyes at it follows the movement of the fingers that hold its prize, and feel the beast’s needle-tipped claws beginning to dig through the thick leather of his gloves. Newt hisses a gentle warning between his teeth until it relaxes its grip.

“You know what to do,” he whispers, then, once he’s certain that the beast has heard him, he flips the coin upwards into the air, making it spin and catch the light of the streetlamps below. The Void-beast leaps upwards in a twist of smokey black essence, its body contorting weirdly as it catches the coin and vanishes it somewhere within the mass of its body. It never lands. The curve of its leap takes it out across the rooftop and along the edge of the wall, until it’s lost in the darkness, a shadow amidst shadows.

Newt watches it go with a sigh, and lets his head rest against the brick of the chimney stack. The beast will hunt for him as long as he keeps on paying it, and for now the price it demands is nothing that he cannot afford. He wonders, briefly, how much he is willing to spend to find what it is that he’s looking for, and then he remembers again the horror and pain he’d seen in the young man’s eyes there at the end, and he knows that he is not yet anywhere close to his limit.

Somewhere out there that young man, Credence, is still alive, he’s sure of it. Voidborn are hard to kill, and one with as much power as he possesses, well. Newt is certain, dark prodigy or not, the boy is in need of help. He thinks then of Percival Graves, and of all that Seraphina Picquery has asked him to do. There’s a fine line between what is acceptable sacrifice and what is the first step on the path to the dark, and it’s a line that’s all too easy for some people to cross. Well, he thinks to himself. The lady is paying, so who is he to question?

But of course, he does question, that’s always been his problem.

_You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?_

No, Theseus, Newt thinks to the echo of his brother’s voice. No, I really can’t. Because if I do, then the consequences are even worse.

Alone in the shadows of the rooftop, Newt Scamander, demon summoner, pulls his scarf more tightly around his neck and huddles against the cold, thinking on the fate of cursed men, and on sacrifice, and on the things we do in order to sleep easy at night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! :D
> 
> (I don't suppose anyone's worked out why the text editor insists on sticking extra spaces in before and after italicised text, have they? I keep noticing it's done it after I've posted what looked fine in preview. :/)


	3. Coffee Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is watching, perhaps it's time to escape for a while. People are still keeping secrets.

The scream of a miscast spell whistles overhead, striking the shielded boundaries of the training hall with a muffled _whump._ Percival brings his wand around in a curving arc that flicks a spell at his opponent’s feet, sweeping the legs of the junior auror out from beneath them and depositing them on their backside on the floor. There are two more circling around to either side, looking to flank him and entangle his feet in spells of their own. He allows one of them to get their entanglement in while he blasts the other back, and then turns to face the caster of the gripping spell, who is staring in astonishment at his entirely unconcerned captive. Percival smiles coolly at him, and yanks hard on the weave of this final opponent’s charm, twisting it from its caster’s grip and turning it back on him. They too go down in a tangle of limbs and flickering energy.

“Remember,” Percival says to the gathered aurors. “If you catch it you must be sure you’re strong enough to hold it. Otherwise...” he gestures with his wand to his prone assailant and there’s a polite smattering of applause. With a sideways flick of his wand-tip he releases the holding charms and allows his students to climb gingerly back to their feet. They return to their peers with sheepish looks, although there’s a certain pride there too for having survived the encounter more or less intact.

These junior aurors may all fear and respect the power of their Director’s magic, but Percival can feel the sweat trickling down his spine and feel his heart fluttering unpleasantly in his breast. They’re only halfway through their training session for today, and already he feels as though he’s spent an entire afternoon in the duelling ring. He turns as the students retake their places amongst the crowd and the next in line step up. The movement draws his gaze to the door of the training hall and it’s only then that he notices the figure waiting off to one side.

Scamander is dressed in his usual dark blue coat, the collar turned up and his arms folded as he leans against the stacked benches set back against the wall. At his feet his ever-present travel case is placed, the battered leather giving no indication of what lies within. Percival knows from the reports what that innocuous piece of luggage represents, and he frowns to see it present so openly. Newt meets his eyes across the room, holds his gaze for a second and then looks away. Behind him Percival can hear the shuffling of his students and feel the weight of their interested gazes on his back. They know who Scamander is, even if they don’t fully understand why he’s around so much these days. Turning back to them, Percival rolls his shoulders to loosen the muscles, and gestures for the next in line to step forward.

To Percival’s surprise, Newt waits out the entire two-hour training session. Not entirely pleased by this, for he’d expected the man to have lost interest long before now, he cuts short the last of the drills, sending the students on their way having thoroughly schooled them in the art of not biting off more than they can chew. Despite the earlier examples he’d made of their fellow trainees by the end he’d still sent three more crashing to the ground tangled up in their own reversed entrapment spells. He watches as the young aurors pack up their kit, and does his utmost to keep the annoyance off his face when he realises that they’re dallying in the hopes of eavesdropping on any conversation he might have with the waiting summoner.

Tiring of this game, Percival retrieves his coat and swings it over his shoulders. Unlike the students he doesn’t wear training robes for these sessions, because he shouldn’t even break a sweat directing them. Today has shown him just how out of sorts he remains. He knows that the young aurors have noted it too, from the sweat making his shirt cling to his skin, to the trembling in his muscles he feels sure they must be able to see. Suddenly cold now that the exertion is over, he shrugs his coat higher around his neck and stalks over to retrieve the summoner.

Newt smiles as he approaches, and pushes off from the benches. “Mr Graves,” he says, quiet enough that Graves can almost hear the trainees straining their ears.

“Did you come to pick up duelling techniques, Mr Scamander, or can I assist you in some other way?”

Newt’s smile doesn’t falter at Percival’s curt tone, and again there’s that flash of resistance which is starting to fascinate Graves. “I’m not much of a dueller, Mr Graves. But I do appreciate your theory.”

“Oh?”

“If you catch the beast by the tail, be aware that it too now has a hold on you.”

Percival snorts softly in acknowledgement. There are those who might call his teaching style unfair and claim a trick, but he’s seen enough young fools try to trap stronger opponents only to learn to their dismay just what their own limits truly are. He eyes Newt up and down, still wondering what the other man is here for, but somewhat mollified by his words. “Indeed. What can I do for you, Mr Scamander?”

Newt glances around, a quick flit of his eyes over the gathered aurors, still busily engaged in the apparently long process of packing up. “I came to check in with you, Director,” he says. Then he looks up and sideways and his eyes narrow just fractionally. “To see if you needed me for anything.”

Percival knows a look of assessment when he sees one, and for a second he fears his thoughts and his condition must be plain on his face. He frowns, turning his back fully to the training hall. “For…?”

Newt does look him in the eye then, an expression that quite clearly says _really? Here?_ and Percival relents. In truth he wouldn’t mind an excuse to make an escape from the curious eyes of his underlings, and he really could do with sitting down to eat. His body feels sluggish and trembly in a way that he associates with complete exhaustion, and it alarms him to think that he is still so far from peak condition. “Never mind, let’s take a walk. Have you eaten yet?”

Newt seems to relax, rescued from having to engage in an awkward conversation by the question. “Uhm, no, not yet.”

“Well, I suppose it’s still early, but it’s stuffy in here, don’t you think?”

He gives Newt no time for a reply, but heads out into the corridor, trusting to him to follow. The staff canteen will be open for food even at this early hour, and there are eateries of various types on different floors of the building, but all run the risk of containing people he does not particularly want to see. No, a better option will be to go out into the city itself in search of food and privacy alike.

“I should bring your scarf if I were you,” he says over his shoulder. “It was still snowing the last I heard.”

And then stiffening his spine against the weakness he can feel creeping through his thighs, he sets off in the direction of the lobby.

  
  


*

  


It’s late afternoon and the streets of New York are filled with a slushy snow that’s already showing signs of becoming treacherous with the onset of the evening freeze. The official Tempestarii guild are predicting another week of snow, at odds with the Ghost’s personal Clairvoyant who’s predicted a turn in the weather, and there’s already a betting pool running in the bullpen as to which of them will be proven correct. Newt follows Percival through the busy streets, wrapped up tight in his gloves and scarf, still surprised by the depth of the chill even in the heart of the city. The Director seems to be in no mood to talk, and it’s all Newt can do to keep up behind him as he’s led a twisting route through the streets to a small coffee house on an avenue he does not know. The name in the window declares that it belongs to a lady called “Rosalind” and the nature of the flyers tacked to the inside of the glass tell Newt that this is most likely a Muggle establishment. Interesting. Percival pushes the door open with the ease of long familiarity and a blast of warm, humid air greets them and draws both wizards inside.

 _Rosalind’s_ turns out to be a poky little place filled with high-backed booths and the rich smell of coffee. Something in the kitchen is being toasted and even though he’d eaten not so long ago Newt’s stomach declares its interest. He lets Percival order for them, the man’s familiarity with the woman that bustles up to take their order easier than making a fuss over the matter. Instead he sits back and watches the way the auror’s hands move on the menu as he glances down, picking off a selection of items in quick succession and smiling briefly for their waitress. In anyone else such a thing would have annoyed Newt, but there’s something distracted and off-colour about the man today that worries him more than the arrogance. He looks paler than Newt knows he should, although he’s comparing to another facsimile he saw months ago, and there’s a busyness to his hands that Newt suspects is there to mask a certain unsteadiness.

They have a booth to themselves, set back against a wall so that within its confines they can enjoy a certain level of privacy. The place isn’t empty of other customers, but there’s a gramophone playing off in one corner, much to Newt’s surprise, and this mingles with and distorts the soft murmur of voices.

“So then, Mr Scamander,” Percival says, looking across the table at him intently. His thumbs are rubbing a constant back-and-forth pattern along the tips of his fingers, and Newt finds the movement incredibly distracting. “What can I do for you?”

What indeed? Newt wonders. “Actually,” he says instead. “I rather wondered what I might do for you, Mr Graves.”

Graves’ eyebrows shoot up in query, and Newt can feel the aggression of the man in the steadiness of his gaze. He’s not one to be taken aback by sudden queries, this auror, and he has no compunction about staring another person down. It’s not unlike the battle of wills between summoner and demon, and that at least is something with which Newt is only too familiar. The thought makes him wince, and he looks down at the dark wood of the table.

“Such as?” Graves asks, his tone as guarded as Newt had hoped to avoid. Those two and a half hours spent watching the Director putting his junior aurors through their paces had told Newt plenty about Percival’s state of health, more even than the man might realise. He’s going to need to be very careful of how he approaches this, for Queenie had been spot on when she’d referred to the man as proud. Proud and with a great deal of face to lose, he thinks.

“Well, Mr Graves,” Newt says carefully. “You are aware of how I was able to track you down?” When Graves nods curtly, Newt continues. “You were caught in quite the web of Void magic, cast by a very powerful summoner. One that had no intention of allowing you to escape. Exposure, as you know, to such magic can lead to side-effects, and those side-effects must be carefully monitored.”

Graves’ face has gone still, and his hands are no longer moving. Newt feels himself wanting to grin at the spike of adrenaline this shift in the other man provokes in him, a reaction to threat he’s never quite been able to master. _Tread carefully,_ he reminds himself. _This one bites._

“I know the healers spoke to you about immediate side-effects, and that you’re well aware of such things yourself considering your line of work. But I suppose what I’m saying is that in _my_ line of work these things are a prime consideration, and as such I am well-equipped to assist or...to mitigate them, should they occur.”

Graves doesn’t reply at once, and Newt has to admit that he’s a little surprised not to receive an immediate deflection of some kind. He risks another glance up into the other man’s eyes, and finds himself being watched, although not closely. The Director’s thoughts are clearly turned inwards in an expression of consideration Newt hadn’t at all expected.

“The healers have cleared me,” Graves says after a few moments, and although the words are offered as statement Newt thinks he can hear the tiniest thread of uncertainty beneath them. “What else am I to expect?”

Newt lets out a slow breath, wondering if that’s the fight for honesty over, and then has to sit back as the waitress returns with toasted bread and soup, coffee and tea,  and some meat-based local dish Newt hadn’t fully caught the name of. There’s a brief respite as they sort out plates and cups and agree that everything is as it should be, and then Newt pours himself tea, using the action to give himself chance to consider his next words. Finally, he looks up again. “Well, I might consider visual and auditory hallucinations, nightmares, a persistent feeling of dread and/or paranoia, and a disturbance to a practitioner’s usual magical abilities in terms of power or success rate of spell-casting to be entirely within the expected consequences of such close and long term exposure.”

Percival has paused, fork halfway to his mouth, but he gets a hold of himself and finishes the movement with a speed that Newt considers admirable. “Hm,” is all he says in reply. “Well.”

Newt gives him time to consider his words and makes a start on the meat dish. It’s some kind of stew, and after some consideration he decides that he likes it. They spend the next few minutes filling themselves up in silence, and Newt can feel the sigils writing themselves in the other man’s head as he quite clearly tries to work out how much he wants to reveal. Newt is very familiar with this game of denial and he knows full well that there has to be something the other man is concealing. You don’t undergo what Percival Graves did and walk away entirely unscathed. And of course it’s only natural that a man like him would want to hide the extent of the damage from not only prying eyes but from the eyes of a man like Newt in particular.

“These side-effects,” Graves asks between bites of stew. “How long will they take to pass?”

Newt shrugs, watching the other man’s face carefully. Percival is focusing on his food, quite clearly deliberately avoiding his gaze. “It will depend somewhat on what they are, and the severity of them. Sometimes they’ll fade on their own, other times they won’t.”

A pause, and Graves looks up to meet his eyes. “Meaning?”

“That without intervention they will persist and perhaps even worsen. It might be possible for me to assist in ameliorating them however, but of course, I’d have to know about them first...”

Percival grunts an acknowledgement, then goes back to mopping up stew with his bread. Newt watches him, half-amused, half-frustrated by the man’s reaction. In his experience people exposed to Void magic react in one of two ways: desperate for his help to escape the continuing horror, or desperate not to reveal that anything is wrong at all. Despite the protection work summoners do these days and the strong regulation of their profession, there remains a stigma to such magic, even for those who have been nothing but its victims.

It takes the length of another half-bowl of stew, a mug and a half of coffee and three more slices of toast before Percival finally answers. Newt spends the time picking at his bread, and wondering if it would be possible to carry out his work from an even greater distance than he already is. There’s no enjoyment in being assigned to a person that so clearly has no patience for his presence, and honestly Newt doesn’t hold that against him. It had taken more than a little convincing on the President’s part to get Newt involved in this mess of a situation in the first place, and now here he is, stuck with it. At least he fully understands why, even if the auror doesn’t. In that there can be some control, and perhaps some mitigation of the damage.

“My magic feels different,” Graves says into the silence between them, laying his cutlery neatly across his plate and picking up his mug of coffee. “It’s weaker. I lack the grasp for the finer mechanics of some castings. The healers told me that my strength would return in time, and that it’s in part to do with the amount of energy my body gave up to fuel the healing process. But now you’re telling me what, that it’s an effect of what Grindelwald did?”

Newt narrows his eyes in interest. “When you say ‘weaker’ do you mean that you’re running out of energy faster, or that you can’t summon the same degree of power as before?”

“Both. Have you ever been ill with the influenza, Mr Scamander?”

“I have.”

“Then it’s like that. The recovery period afterwards where you reach for your magic and there’s not as much there as you’d expect.” He leans back, regarding Newt frankly over the rim of his mug. Clearly he’s come to some decision about how honest he must be, self-interest winning out over pride.

“And you said you were unable to complete the finer detailing on some spells,” Newt prompts him. “Is that a particular type of spell or is it across the board?”

Percival hesitates for only a beat, taking a moment to consider this. “I’d put it down to exhaustion rather than any particular school of magic. Is that likely to be a consideration?”

Newt shrugs one shoulder, “It’s something we should perhaps bear in mind. It may be worth you noting any pattern. Sometimes Void curses can be subtle and blockages are hard to spot until their effects become manifest.” Percival is frowning at him in concern, and Newt offers the man what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “Really, I think you’d notice immediately if you became unable to cast a particular type of magic, though possibly best you bear it in mind.”

Still frowning, Graves reaches for the coffee pot and pours himself a final mug. Newt can tell from the tightness around the other man’s mouth that he’s unnerved him, and curses inwardly. It’s so difficult to talk about this kind of thing without people getting themselves worked up.

“Uhm, listen,” he tries, not entirely certain how to go about calming the man’s fears. “I didn’t mean to worry you, Mr Graves. It’s just, we need to-, well, _I_ need to know if you notice anything like that happening, because that’s part of why I’m here, isn’t it? To deal with it, if it does. I mean, I’m not trying to pry, I assure you…”

“No, I quite understand, Mr Scamander. And I...thank you for your concern. I’ll be sure to come to you if I notice anything out of the ordinary.” Graves gives him a smile that has no humour to it, then nods to the empty tea pot. “More?”

Newt follows his gaze, his immediate instinct to say no. He’s already starting to feel as though he’s outstayed his welcome today, and most likely thoroughly ruined the other man’s afternoon with his doom-mongering.

“I’m having more coffee,” Graves tells him conversationally, already beckoning the waitress back over.

“Well,” Newt replies, glancing at the darkening street outside and squinting at the sight of a fresh fall of snow. The offer doesn’t seem to have been made simply out of politeness, but then he’s not very good at judging these things sometimes. He does tend to assume the worst of people, and to be fair he’s normally right. On the other hand Graves seems to have made a conscious decision to pull himself together and doesn’t appear to be concerned by his continued presence. “Yes, all right. It’s really the weather for it, isn’t it?”

“Mm,” Graves replies. “Quite.”

And that’s that. Graves orders more coffee for himself and tea for Newt, then appears to think for a moment before indulging in one of the cakes from the selection displayed under little glass domes on the counter. Newt waves aside the offer this time and instead sips his tea, sitting in something strangely close to a companionable silence as Graves munches his way steadily through a generous portion of some sort of fruit cake. _This hunger is probably indicative of something,_ Newt thinks, watching over the rim of his teacup. He doesn’t comment though, and when finally Percival sits back and meets his eyes again, he merely bobs his head and looks away, just as he always does.

 

*

  


The house is freezing by the time Percival gets back. It’s still early, barely even half seven, and already it’s colder than a tomb inside. He sets about lighting the fire in the downstairs grate and setting one in the bedroom for later, before summoning wine from the cellar and settling himself in his sitting room. Tonight will not be another midnight venture across the icy rooftops in search of VISP sigils to calibrate, for the stars are not aligned or the wind is not in the right direction, he hadn’t been entirely certain what the summoner had been talking about when he’d laid out his reasoning. Suffice it to say they’re not to meet again with regards to that matter for another two days.

 _Newton Scamander._ Percival presses the rim of the wine glass against his lips as he considers what he’s come to know of the summoner. He’s not entirely sure what had possessed him to drag the man out to an early dinner as he had, but the weight of his junior aurors’ gazes had been intolerably heavy, and he’d been filled with a formless anger at their curiosity which would have been distinctly out of place had he let it get the better of him. No, he’d had to remove the pair of them from the situation before he’d had chance to make a fool of himself.

 _Side-effects_ , he thinks. _Auditory and visual hallucinations, a feeling of dread, and what else had he said? Paranoia? And nightmares too._ For a brief second his mind is filled with the scent of burning feathers and rot, and such a rolling cramp of sickness fills his stomach that he puts his wineglass down in a hurry, convinced he’s going to vomit up his recent meal. The feeling passes and he sits back in his chair, wiping his forehead on his sleeve and frowning at the sweat he cleans away. Just a nightmare. Just a damned nightmare.

He hasn’t spoken to anyone of those, not even the healers. He’d mentioned, in an offhand way, that he was having some trouble sleeping through the night, and they’d offered him sleeping potions to help. He’d accepted them, somewhat embarrassed, and never opened even a one, convinced that were he to take them they’d simply lock him into a nightmare and not allow him the release of waking up. The idea of being trapped in that stinking, hazy dream for the entire night fills him with a cold dread. Still, that’s all they are - dreams. Nothing that can harm him, nothing that disturbs him during the day, at least not if he concentrates on his work.

The only thing that does concern him is the idea that his magic may change. Percival has always taken great pride in his magical ability. He’s a powerful wizard, always the head of his class at Ilvermorny, and these days unrivalled in the duelling arena by any witch or wizard that cares to try their skill against him. It’s not something he’s boastful of precisely, but nor does he claim any false humility in the matter. He’s simply good at what he is, and at what he does. For that to be threatened fills him with a sense of alarm far deeper than any other possible side-effect mentioned.

He thinks then of how difficult this afternoon’s training session had been. He’s magically out of shape, so to speak. It’s to be expected for someone who’s experienced as great a physical and spiritual trauma as he did. Grindelwald’s incarceration of him had not been kind - at least so they tell him. The memory of it remains hazy, indistinct, a blur of words and darkness that mixes strangely in his memory and makes him suspect that he’d been tested to his limits, and the limits of the mental bindings placed on him by the responsibilities of his rank. No, the mind healers had declared him free of outside mental conditioning, and the Office of Secrets had confirmed that all of his geas and protective vows remain unbroken. He’d been in terrible physical condition and that’s all it is. Any weakness in his magical ability is attributable entirely to his still incomplete recovery.

And yet Scamander’s words hover in his memory. After he’d agreed to come to Newt with any further changes in his magic, they’d spoken no more of side-effects. In fact, they’d barely spoken any more at all. The rest of the time had passed by in a surprisingly comfortable silence broken only by the clink of teacups and the offer of further cake. Looking back on it, Percival thinks that perhaps he ought to have made more of an effort to be a good dinner companion, but the truth is he’d been so relieved to be away from the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of the office that to simply sit back in peace and listen to the gramophone alongside a man to whom he had nothing to explain had been an undeniably welcome respite.  

Because Newt knows everything, doesn’t he? Percival doesn’t have to explain himself to the man, he just has to put up with his company for the sake of appearances, and in doing so play the great political game. Then, along the way, perhaps he can learn a few interesting facts about the demon summoning community from one of their own. Things that only a summoner like Newt would be able to tell him, because apparently the man is, in his own way, head and shoulders above the rest of his kind.

Percival sighs and drains his wine glass. He’s hungry again, and he knows for a fact that sleep will be a long time coming tonight. When it does arrive it will bring with it dreams that are full of bone and feathers and a cold green fire. At best perhaps he’ll snatch an hour or two, and then he’ll be wide awake again with no hope of dropping back off. No, he doesn’t sleep much these days, and perhaps that’s a good thing - less time in which to dream of the endless dark.

He’s still thinking of this as he pushes himself to his feet and makes his way to the kitchen to fix an early supper. As he waits for the stove to heat his thoughts drift back again to Newt and he wonders what the other man is doing with his evening. Maybe he’s gone out to visit associates in the city; perhaps even the sisters for he seems to share a friendship with them. Or maybe he’s down in that strange case of his, communing with the Void beasts he’s dedicated his life to capturing. The stack of paperwork that damned contraption had required in order to be fully compliant with VISP regulations had been truly mountainous, and in the end it had all come down to one signature. Madame President had signed off on its presence and its contents, and vouched for the security of the wardings in place down there. It’s such an unlikely exception that Percival is almost forced to wonder what it is that Newt has on the woman.  

No...no Percival has seen the paperwork, he’s heard Seraphina’s explanation. She, for reasons of her own, is entirely convinced by Scamander’s capacity to contain his demons and protect their city. She’d even shown him one of the wards the man uses, sketched out on a scrap of paper they’d had to burn afterwards, and just the memory of it makes Percival’s head ache. No, Scamander can be trusted in that respect, he’s certain of that.

But _why._ Why is he so certain?

He’s still musing on that when the kettle begins to shrill and the timer he’s set for the oven starts to ring, and the thought is lost amidst the rush to pour water and spell yesterday’s leftover pie back to an edible temperature. Later, when he’s lying awake in bed he’ll think of it again, but for now there’s the business of supper to attend to, and it’s to this that he applies himself entirely.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time there will be demons! Just a warning, I suppose. :/9 Or a promise? 
> 
> Thanks for reading, I hope you're enjoying it so far. :]


	4. Incursion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is not right in the city tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watch your step, here be demons.

The month passes in freezing nights and long days full of paperwork, as the slow, careful return to routine emerges from the chaos that had gone before. The Director and his summoner continue to work late, starting at midday and only returning to their respective homes in the very early hours of the morning. Newt has a complicated book of charts that explain exactly why the VISP calibration must be carried out in the middle of the night, and his explanations have a great deal to do with the vulnerability of the human psyche in the darkest hours, and the testing of the wards at the point at which they’re most needed. Demons rarely attack in the middle of the day, he tells Percival, who has heard all these theories and more during his training but who still suspects a large part of what Newt is doing is down to the summoner’s own intuition. That, as is so often the way with magic of any kind, is just how it goes.

They settle into a cautiously neutral working relationship, one which requires little of either of them beyond professional courtesy and a polite tolerance for the other’s company. In truth it’s not that difficult for either of them. Newt is quiet and borderline withdrawn, although Percival is often aware of the man’s curious gaze whenever he believes Percival’s attention is elsewhere. Two weeks into their strange alliance and he hasn’t yet managed to draw the man on the reason for his interest, and in truth, hasn’t made much of an attempt to find out. Newt may be his unwanted watchdog, but Percival has plenty of other concerns to attend to.

The work to unpick the extent of Grindelwald’s intrusion seems never-ending, and there is an endless string of meetings to attend, people to whom he must reaffirm his loyalty, and paperwork to fill out, stamp and approve. He finds himself flowing through it all with a strange sense of unreality, as though somewhere along the line he has become unmoored from his place in the world and entered into a strange parallel existence where he is only acting out his part for the benefit of everyone else. And act he must, and be the most perfect Director their suspicions and their guilt could ever want or imagine. For the new scrutiny he is under is indeed as immense as Seraphina had said it would be, and he is ever aware of it no matter how small the detail of his actions.

Despite what he’d expected, it’s not the way the gazes of the members of Congress linger just a little too long on him during meetings, or the extra sets of paperwork that are suddenly required when he needs to sign off on something. He’s being watched and he knows both that they’re testing him and that they have every right to. It’s the little things that do it. He catches the receptionist watching the manner in which he makes his coffee in the morning, her attention on the way his fingers grip the spoon and he knows without having to look her in the eyes that she’s comparing what she sees to what has gone before, and perhaps wondering what she should have been seeing all along. It’s the way Red watches him in the reflection of the brass plating on his elevator controls, and it’s so unlike the goblin not to simply stare outright that it’s only the fact it would take half an hour to climb each way that he doesn’t just take the damned stairs to avoid that uncomfortable appraisal.

His time with Scamander becomes a sort of escape from the hell of it all. Day to day existence has become a drain on his energy that stretches his nerves and depletes his patience with even his closest staff. The constant sense of being under subtle observation is pervasive and trying. Of course the summoner himself appears to have one eye on him at all times, but with Newt where there is observation there at least appears to be no judgement. Right now Percival will take the small mercies. He finds relief only in the wholly non-judgemental manner of the summoner’s reaction to him, and the irony of that is not lost on MACUSA’s returned Director.

Newton Scamander is not at all like the demon summoners to which Percival is accustomed. Had he not already known the man’s trade, he might even have missed the clues. Percival, unlike the vast majority of the magical population, has spent a significant amount of time around summoners. Although it goes hand-in-hand with being an auror, exposure to dark magic is primarily, even for men like Percival, by way of human dark magic. Practitioners of the blackest arts, those that draw on the power of the Void and its entities, are rare both by natural occurrence and by the simple fact that even successful control of Void powers is extraordinarily dangerous.

Percival knows demon summoners only through the licensed practitioners of the art, those men and women tied to MACUSA by blood vow and soul bond. Screening for their gifts starts young, and bloodlines that produce such mages are strictly monitored. Even so the gift is rare and often unwanted. It’s no wonder, for the creatures of the Void bend mind and reality with their very presence, and their magic leaves a lasting mark.

Which is why Newton Scamander is such a fascinating man. Percival is all too familiar with the two summoners that haunt the halls of the Woolworth building. Silent and withdrawn, he thinks of them in terms of their cold, watchful eyes, and the thin-lipped warnings they give whenever they’re called upon to advise on an Incursion alert. There hasn’t been a true incursion in fifty years, at least, not until Grindelwald had arrived. Even then, what he’d done down in the tunnels below the city, what he’d tried to do to the Voidborn boy, well. They tell him that it hadn’t been a true incursion, but even so Scaworth is still unconscious in hospital and Blundell has only come back on duty in the last two days. Percival had welcomed him back personally and been shocked at the hollow darkness in the man’s eyes. He’s always been a strange one, but there’s something brittle about him now, a carefully controlled composure that Percival doesn’t like the look of at all.

No, compared to all the summoners Percival has ever met, Scamander is...it’s hard to say. He’s cheerful and obliging, sincere and frank in a manner that he simply doesn’t associate with the notoriously bleak-souled and secretive body of summoners. There’s an unexpected curiosity to him that takes Percival by surprise every time he catches a glimpse of it in the man’s quickly hidden smile or the intensity of his rarely caught gaze. He is, quite simply, alive in a way that Percival doesn’t associate with members of his trade. Alive, and curiously - outwardly - untouched by the monstrousness so inherent to his profession. And he is, although it probably makes Percival something of a callous bastard to say it, actually rather a pleasant fellow - for a summoner.

Graves takes that thought with him throughout the day, although he bites his tongue when he sees people casting wary looks in Scamander’s direction. As long as they don’t begin to undermine the smooth running of the department with their attention then Percival can understand their curiosity, for he too feels it. He however has far more at stake than they do, and as such cannot afford to have his integrity be considered compromised by this strange and unlikely example of a Void summoner.

No, it’s up to him to maintain the height of professionalism with Newton Scamander at all times, and if there’s relief from the weight of political scrutiny to be found in his company then that too is just the way things go.

  


*

  


It’s not until the thin tracery of ice starts to form across the surface of the mirror that Newt notices something is wrong. In truth it takes him far longer than it should to recognise the formless weight of dread slowly descending across his body for what it truly is. In the end it requires the whispering from his open case to reach the scratchy, piercing hiss of just-shattered glass for his concentration to be broken well enough to sit up in annoyance and pay attention.

It’s a Tuesday night, far past midnight of the previous day and well into the early hours of the new one, and there’s been no need to go out into the electric-bright cold of the city’s strange winterscape this evening. No night-time outing across the rooftops or descent into the sewers to find the hidden sigils that bind New York up in their web of protection, no careful calibration beneath the moon and no Director of Magical Security, watchful and silent at his back. Newt has spent the evening in calibration of his own tools, restocking his supplies from the gardens in his case, and for the past six hours imbuing a crystal charm with layers of protective magic. It’s delicate, intricate work, and it’s easy to lose track of time amidst the intensity of his concentration.

Despite that, the imbuing of warding charms has its own strange meditative quality, the hands and the mind focused on a task that although intricate, is ultimately repetitive, and as such the higher parts of his brain are left free to wander. He’s been thinking of the past month, and of how pleased the sisters appear to be with their new apartment. With Tina’s promotion has come a significant rise in her salary, and the new place is big enough that each sister can have her own room - a true luxury afforded, Newt is well aware, by their association with him. This new fascination the magical populace of New York has with him is deeply unnerving and entirely misguided Newt feels, but at the same time he’s not above using it a little to his advantage, or at least the advantage of his friends. Where, surely, is the harm in that?

 _Hm,_ he thinks. _Careful now. There’s harm in acting and harm in not acting and the most harm in best intentions. Selfishness is the summoner’s bane._

As with all magic, intent is everything, and for a summoner, ever in competition with the will of his summons, his own intention isn’t the only one he must concern himself with. Particularly when the magic he uses has quite the will of its own and all the malicious intelligence required to use it. Percival Graves for one would have sharp words for him on that matter.

Newt winces. He’d been very carefully avoiding all thought of MACUSA’s Director of Magical Security so far this evening, but the man’s dark eyes and furrowed brow are now firmly back in Newt’s mind just as overbearing as they are in the flesh. No, not overbearing, that’s a little unfair. Percival Graves is an important, powerful man, and he has the mannerisms to match that. It’s interesting though, because where with Theseus such attitudes truly are overbearing and infuriatingly arrogant, with Percival Newt finds them somehow acceptable. Graves is professional about what he does. He pushes because he has the safety of his city in mind, and not because he has a deep-seated personal belief that Newt is somehow incapable.

 _Oh, stop it,_ Newt thinks to himself crossly. Thinking of Theseus and his attitude always turns him irritable, and there’s never anything good that comes of it. Far better to focus on MACUSA’s version of his brother, the one to whom Newt is now so painfully and inextricably bound, and by his own choice - because that’s not at all going to unbalance him. Merlin, what would Theseus say? Newt’s hands still for a brief second, and he stares down at the little crystal charm, his eyes seeing something else entirely. Dealing with Void magic is all about sacrifice, he’s understood that since the very beginning, and about not allowing yourself to get involved where you cannot afford to compromise. It’s about strength of will and making the necessary choices, the hard ones, for the good of all. It’s about knowing when a battle is lost and cutting those losses while you still can. It’s not about fair play or even justice, for the Void cares nothing for any of that, and sentimentality will get you killed or worse. And yet that’s always where Newt’s gone wrong.

He’s still thinking on this, struggling to find the calm he needs to fill his mind with the mantras of clarity and focus, when the whispering finally breaks through his self-reflection. Newt cocks his head to the side, but his hands don’t stop moving, the tip of his wand continuing to trace a glowing line of symbols across the surface of the charm. He listens, hearing the mournful, fluting cries of the Migen, their voices like the whispering of children. They’ll be down in the moonlit enclosure, gathered together in their herd, their strange, stumpy little bodies almost like tiny calves, until they turn en masse and their gimlet gazes reveal their true nature to an observer. Men have been known to go mad looking too long into their eyes. They are useful little beasts though, denizens of a plane just a little less strange than many and a lot more physical than most, for they sense the coming of others of their kind with a truly uncanny accuracy.

They’re whispering to him now, sharp and unpleasant like the mewling of a sick baby, and somewhere amidst their babbling Newt can hear his name. He realises then that he is cold, far colder than the tired heating of his rented room could warrant, and that his muscles ache with tension. Newt looks up and for the first time he sees the delicate patterning of frost making its way across the surface of the dresser mirror, drawing itself across the glass with creeping patience. He stares, transfixed, extending his magical senses outwards to catch the echo of what he suspects must be the case.

Yes, _there._

Something in the night stirs, some thread out of place that only a wizard of his special knowledge, of his blood, might ever notice. The one discordant note in the harp’s otherwise beautiful trail of notes. Newt stares at his reflection, and his reflection blinks back at him and crooks him a razor-edged smile.

Newt does not smile back.

Instead he scrambles to his feet, snaps the lid of his case closed and reaches for his coat. Out in the street he pauses for the briefest of moments as though undecided on some difficult matter, then, mind made up, turns on his heel and heads into the night.

  


*

  


Percival Graves answers the knocking not half a minute after the sound reverberates through his darkened hallway. He opens his front door to a rush of snowflakes that flurry across the toes of his polished shoes, and the sight of Newton Scamander standing two steps down looking up at him in the dim streetlight. The man is wrapped up tight in thick coat and long, winding scarf, his case clutched close at his side and his mouth a thin, unhappy line. Percival looks into his eyes and the annoyance at his intrusion vanishes immediately.

“There’s going to be an incursion,” Newt says stiffly. “I can feel it. We need to go _now_.”

Percival turns on his heel, reaches for his coat, and follows the summoner out into the night.

The streets of New York are unseasonably cold this year. March has not brought with it a softening of winter’s grip, and although spring is rapidly approaching the sidewalks are still glassy with ice and the windowsills remain covered with an inch of snow. People have begun to complain that the winter seems never-ending this year, and prophets and populace alike look to the skies and shake their heads in concern. Percival follows Newt on foot through the streets, letting the summoner lead him a winding path through the city. Occasionally he apparates, his hand on Percival’s elbow to take him along, homing in on something Percival himself can’t quite sense. At least not until they’re closer.

He’s still trying to work out how he feels about being dragged erratically around the city when they emerge into the darkness of an unlit pathway, and quite suddenly the sense of wrongness hits him with all the shock of being dunked into an icy river. Percival draws up sharply, his hand going to Newt’s wrist, grabbing tight hold to draw the man to a halt. Newt has already frozen, and Percival can hear him breathing deeply, slow and measured, taking stock of the situation.

To their left the silvered expanse of the East River stretches out beneath the moonlight, with the lights of what must be Welfare Island lying beyond. Extending a little way out into the water, a stone’s throw away from their position alongside a row of dark and sheltering bushes, a rickety wooden pier reaches out into the river. It’s to this, to the figure standing on the very end that every sense in their bodies is drawn.

The person is of average height, cloaked in the manner of one in formal robes, and they are standing with their back to the riverbank, arms hanging loose at their sides, the faint breeze coming in along the water stirring the hems of their clothing and lifting the long, loose ponytail from their shoulders. There’s a darkness to this figure, a gathering of shadows so intense that even the light of the lantern sitting at the figure’s feet cannot penetrate it. It’s wrong in a way that draws the eye and will not let go.

“Shall I call in a team?” Percival asks, surprised to find his mouth is dry. He can feel, even from this distance, the presence of black magic, of _Void_ magic, crawling across his skin and making the hair on the back of his neck rise.

“No,” Newt says softly, and from the corner of his eye Percival sees him kneel and set down his case, pushing it sideways under a bush out of sight. “We’ll do this now.”

“What is-?” Percival attempts, because the person at the end of the pier is wrong. Human-shaped and human-clothed, but something about it is making Percival’s stomach twist and a cold sweat rise on his back.

“Summoner,” Newt replies, taking a few quick steps forward, speaking softly as he goes. “Come on, just hold back behind me, will you? I think our friend there is struggling.”

Friend? Percival thinks, hurrying after Newt. He finds that his wand is already in his hand, although he has no memory at all of drawing it. The night around them is silent save for the gentle lapping of water along the river's edge - all other sound is absent, and where there should be the distant hum of the night time city even that is muted. Newt is making his way quickly down to where the path ends and the water begins, and for a single moment Percival is gripped by the intense need to pull him back, to stop him from setting even a single foot on that dark pier. But Newt is already out of his grasp, treading slowly and quietly along the narrow wooden walkway.

The pier is wide enough for the both of them to stand side by side with a little room to spare, but Percival adheres to Newt’s instruction to stay a step back, trusting in the summoner’s expertise in handling this. Newt has not yet drawn his own wand, but Percival can see that he’s measuring some unknown variable from the twitch of his fingers and the way he tilts his head. The figure at the end of the pier still has not moved.

It takes ten paces for them to reach the midsection of the walkway, and by that time they can hear the creak and rock of wood on water, a boat perhaps, moored in the darkness beyond, and see the sigil daubed around the summoner’s feet. It’s fifteen paces before they can smell the blood, and it’s there that they stop, Newt halting them both with a hand held back behind him to Percival.

This close, from the cut of the robes and the shape of the shoulders, the figure would appear to be a man. His clothing is styled after the black and deep purple robes of the notorious Knights of Walpurgis, and Percival, even from this angle, can almost hear Newt sigh. The Knights had been the personal band of that ancient fallen summoner Mordered who had set into motion the fracturing of the barriers, and every so often some young fool is wont to take it upon themselves to hearken back to ‘the old ways’. Although banned outright and for good reason, there are ever those capable of romanticising evil.

And yet, gauche mimicry aside, there is nothing pitiful or ridiculous about the aura of wrongness that clings to this man like smoke.

“Hello,” Newt says quietly.

It takes some moments before the man turns, and when he does Percival finds himself tensing, ready to cast, painfully alert for an attack. His nerves are strung tight as a bowstring and he can feel the rapid pulse of his heart throbbing in his chest. The man turns, and with him the shadows shift, and the face that he shows them is young, far younger than Percival had expected. Nineteen, he thinks, perhaps twenty.

“I can see that you’re busy,” Newt says to the young man standing in the sigil of blood. “But you seem to be needing a second hand, so I’m here to offer you a counter-caster.”

 _Counter-caster,_ Percival’s heard the term before. Someone to hold the other side of a ritual, to prop up a difficult spell and feed it energy while the other person weaves the details into place. They call them pinion-pointers at Ilvermorny.

The man is staring at Newt, and there’s a distance in his gaze that does not bode well. His eyes are so bloodshot that in the gloom they look almost black, the physical manifestation of magical overreach. Were this any ordinary dark wizard Percival would have moved to apprehend him by now, but this is a summoner and by their nature summoners are often not alone.

“Where’s your creature?” Newt asks gently, but the man does not reply. He is breathing through his mouth, low and fast, and when he tilts his head a thin trickle of blood begins to seep from his nostril. Percival tightens his grip on his wand, and Newt says, more pressing now, “Where is it, friend? Show me.”

At his side the man’s hands are clenched strangely, fingers curled into grasping claws, stiff and shaking with some unimaginable tension. Newt is staring into his eyes, sharing a communion that Percival cannot understand and does not want to. The stench of blood is making him feel faintly sick, the smell of the river mingling unpleasantly with the meat tang. There’s an inexplicable dread pressing in on him from all sides, an awful fear that’s taken root in his muscles and is, to his horror, making the very tip of his wand tremble just slightly.

The young summoner’s mouth works, and Percival watches the thin trail of blood trickle down his upper lip then spill down and over his chin to be lost in the dark material of his robes. His head twitches sideways, and his eyes roll back and that is when the demon climbs out of the water behind him and pulls itself onto the pier.

The creature is long-limbed and humanoid, but that is where its resemblance to anything human ends. In the gloom it is difficult to see, but the shape of the shadows suggest that its head is rounded and low-slung, the mouth drooping wide and open. They do not need any more than the scant light available to see that from this maw drools a slow flow of viscous, stringy liquid. The demon’s skin glistens in the lantern’s radiance, light chasing itself around and along its form like moonlight on the water. And in the strange fall of shadows it takes Percival’s mind a long, painful moment to understand what it is seeing. The demon’s body is entirely transparent, the soft curve of its form like a jellyfish, and through its skin can be seen the lights of the island behind. The stench of it is abhorrent: seawater and rot and something else far more foul.

It takes a step further into the light, peering around its summoner’s shoulders with animal curiosity, raising its blunt snout to scent for them. It is eyeless and blind, and within the depths of its bloated, water-sac body there floats the remnants of its last meal. Percival eyes the scraps of torn flesh and the pinkish gleam of blood and is surprised at his own calm when he recognises the shape of what it had been.

“It is beautiful,” the young man rasps, and both of them can see the swell of tears at the corners of his eyes. Dark fluid wells, then over-spills and leaves stark black trails down his pale cheeks. Percival tenses, ready to blast the damned thing away, but Newt puts a hand around his wrist, the sudden grip as tight as a vice. “ _No_ ,” he says, low and intense, aimed solely at the horrified auror.

“Summoner,” Newt continues, and the young man trembles as the demon takes a step closer. “You _must_ get that beast under control. It’s taking over and you can’t let it do that. Don’t _listen_ to what it’s telling you, you know what you’re feeling is what it’s bringing with it.”

“ _Newt,”_ Percival says warningly, and Newt tightens his grip fractionally.

“Block it out,” Newt urges intently. “Ignore its aura and push your own back in place. You’re in control here, not it!”

“I don’t- you don’t understand, I can’t see-” the young summoner gasps. His demon takes another step forward, and the sound of its feet on the wooden pier is a wet, slapping shuffle. It reaches up one long arm and grips the man’s left shoulder, sliding in behind him. The long, watery fingers start to tighten and they hear the sickening crack of bone as the summoner jerks and gasps.

“Fuck,” Percival hisses, and then the demon’s head rises around the man’s other shoulder, and faster than they can react its maw extends unnaturally wide as it latches on to the summoner’s other shoulder and begins to bite. Where its mouth touches flesh the man’s skin starts to hiss and bubble, and Percival yanks his wrist free from Newt’s grasp and casts.

The demon is _fast._ It jerks backwards like a cracked whip and is gone into the dark water with an eel-like twist before its summoner even hits the ground. It leaves him convulsing on the floor in a widening pool of dark blood, heels scraping on the wood in agony.

“Fuck!” Percival snarls again. “I don’t know if I hit it!”

Newt is already on one knee next to the moaning man. His face is grim and he’s keeping his distance as the youth thrashes. “Don’t kill it,” he says over his shoulder. “But for Merlin’s sake don’t let it touch you! I need to banish it properly or this one is going to die.”

Percival turns a slow circle, only just managing not to flinch when he feels Newt press up against his hip. They stand back to back, wands raised as they wait for the demon to resurface. There is no need to ask if the beast has fled - the dread that lingers on the air is still far too palpable for that. Around them there’s nothing but the slow lap of water and the gasping of the wounded man at their feet.

The demon comes up out of the water so fast they almost don’t see it. Its transparent body is difficult to pick out in the gloom and it’s only by the flicker of reflected light that passes across its bulging skin that the thing’s movement is apparent. Newt does not see it coming, but Percival does. Twenty-five long years of auror training, not to fight demons per se, but to be the one that steps forward, the one that defends, the one that holds back the dark, all those years kick in and he reacts without even thinking. Percival moves into the path of the charging demon just as Newt is finally turning towards the threat. He hears Newt curse even as he steps between him and the oncoming monster, because all told this is possibly the stupidest thing Percival could have done. Newt is the trained Void summoner and right here, right now, Percival is just an auror.

And yet, step he does. For there’s a horror that’s been building in Percival’s soul, in the meat of his limbs and the marrow of his bones, a disgust so deep and resonant that it’s making him want to crawl out of his skin. He’s faced down dark magic and dark mages before, and he’s seen some awful things in his time, but this, this is magic of the Void and it’s wrong on a level that’s so fundamentally abhorrent he’s unable to even articulate the concept. And there’s another emotion in him now, one that shot through him in the seconds between the creature’s reappearance and its charge, something far beyond fear. He recognises it only after it has taken hold, but by that point it has already decided his actions for him. It’s rage, pure and simple. An ice-cold fury, a disgusted disbelief of the sheer audacity of this thing, this monster that thinks it has the right to hurt anything in this world, anything at all under his protection.

The demon’s maw opens wide, ready to bite, and Percival looks it in its blunt, eyeless head and simply says, _“No.”_

For the briefest of moments the demon pauses, and what attention it has that had been fixed on Newt comes around and latches on to Percival instead. Graves meets its eyeless gaze square on and in that second of shared fixation he _knows_ the beast. There’s a mindless malevolence to it, a miasma of hateful intent drawn into a battering force that could be called nothing less than insentient physics were it not for the absolute anathema of its existence to the natural order of things. His nose fills up with the reek of blood and offal, saltwater and despair, and his feet start to go out from under him as a debilitating dizziness takes hold of his body.

And then the demon collides with him and Percival has just enough chance to bring up his hands to fend it off before it hits him with all the weight of a breaking wave. His wands goes skittering sideways out of his grasp and his hands are full of the demon’s cold mass. It tries to bear him down under its weight and he feels his fingers dig into its body, the flesh giving way beneath his grip like soft, water-rotted meat. With a strength born of horror, Percival shoves the beast off to one side, shouting in disgust as its flesh gives beneath his hands.

Above him Newt is chanting, the words squirming and unpleasant, making the air coil and thicken between each syllable. They’re words of binding and of banishment, spoken in the same language that passes for speech in the Void realms. Percival rolls onto his stomach and tries to push himself to his knees, but Newt puts a foot on his shoulder and shoves him down again with remarkable strength. He doesn’t for a single moment pause in his chanting and Percival can feel his skin crawling and the bile rising in his throat. The demon is frozen in place, toweringly upright, its body twisted round on itself in a way that something with bones could never manage. Newt’s voice is filling the night with a power that makes Percival want something he can’t even name, and then there’s a noise like the shattering of glass and the demon’s form collapses in on itself. Bloody seawater and scraps of half-digested flesh fall to the planking in a sudden rush, spilling filthy water in a flood across the pier.

Released from the grip of those terrible words, Percival shoves himself up, scrambling to his knees to escape the encroaching foulness, disgust making him snarl. Newt steps back with him, turning to twist his fingers into Percival’s coat at the shoulder and help pull him to his feet. “Are you all right?” he demands. “Percival, look at me!”

Percival holds up his hands, expecting to see the skin blistered and burnt by the demon’s touch, but his palms are smooth and unblemished, the fingers clean. He holds them up for Newt to see, still full of confusion and feeling weirdly off-balance, as though the world is yet tilting beneath his feet. Newt transfers his grip from the shoulder of his coat to the back of Percival’s neck and peers into his eyes intently for a moment. Then, “Stay here,” he says, and turns away.

With the banishment of the demon, sound and light have returned to the night around them. Percival spits to clear the taste of blood from his mouth and wipes the back of his hand across his lips. He feels dirty, contaminated and weak, as though every scrap of energy has been drawn out of him. Vaguely, through the haze of his discomfort he realises that Newt is gone. A moment later and he understands where. _Get it together, Graves,_ he reprimands himself, and stumbles after his companion.

Newt is on his knees in the bloody water at the end of the pier, his hand on the crushed and torn chest of the summoner. The air stinks of foulness, but with the departure of the demon it’s as though the night is somehow lighter, the lantern brighter. In its glow the rogue summoner’s skin is pale, the blood that tracks across his cheeks turned from black back to crimson. By the time Percival has managed the handful of steps it takes to reach them both, it is clear the young man is already dead.

Percival pauses, looking around at the wreckage. In the light of the moon the man’s robes look like a costume, like a child playing dress-up - badly sewn and poorly fitted. In death there is no innocence to his gaze, just a deep and abiding horror that has been indelibly stamped on his features. Knowing what he does of what it takes to summon a demon, what it must have been that he’d seen floating in the monster’s body, Percival finds himself struggling to feel anything but anger.

“Newt,” he says, and then clears his throat when the word comes out half-broken by the dryness of his mouth. “Newt, is that- is it safe?”

Newt swipes at his cheek with the cuff of one sleeve, and when he turns to glance briefly upwards Percival is startled to see the wetness of tears upon the man’s cheek. It is not fear that has put them there, he thinks, but something far more unexpected. There’s a sorrow in Newt’s gaze, a grief for the man lying broken at his knees that Percival can barely comprehend. It silences him, and hardens the frown on his face.

“Yes, it’s, it’s gone. It’s banished. I couldn’t- I’m sorry, I couldn’t save him. He’d strung himself out, the backlash was- he was too far gone…” Newt trails off, looking up at Percival with a pain that deflates the auror’s anger as quickly as the demon had lost its form.

Still, Percival doesn’t know what to say to this man who pities even those who have fallen the furthest. Finding no comfort in Percival’s stony silence, Newt turns back to look at the dead summoner, shaking his head. Despite his previous confidence, despite having faced down and banished such a monstrous beast only minutes before, now he looks lost. At a loss for what to do, Percival takes a step forward. Body still shaking with reaction he’s nonetheless already thinking of who will need to be summoned, the clean-up teams and the reports that are going to need filing. An incursion, an _actual incursion_ right in the heart of New York city. Morgana’s tits they’ll need to keep this quiet. But, right now-

He thinks that Newt may be crying again. Gently, cautiously, he lays just the tips of his fingers on the man’s shoulder. Around them the night is filled with the scent of blood and the rhythmic lapping of the river against the struts of the pier.

“Come, Mr Scamander,” he says softly into the gloom of the unlucky night. “We need to cast up some screening around this mess, then you must let me take you home.”

Newt does not reply, but he nods, then flicks the tip of his wand and with a whispered _accio_ Percival’s wand comes whipping out of the darkness and into his grasp. When he turns to hand it over his cheeks are dry and Percival reaches down to accept it without comment. Newt pulls himself to his feet, and by the time Percival has laid down the initial set of Disillusionment charms the first of the auror squads have already begun to arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amount of fun I have thinking up different demons for these guys to summon is probably unhealthy. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. :]


	5. Bated Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day after the incursion. 
> 
> Everybody is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

It’s nearly three in the afternoon when the soft knock sounds on Graves’ office door. He finishes writing his last sentence, sighs, and then lays down his pen.

“Enter.”

The man that steps slowly inside is tall and rake thin. He moves with all the exaggerated care of someone still nursing an injury, and Percival rises quickly to his feet at the sight of him. “Byron!” he exclaims. “Please, come in! Let me get you a chair.”

The man, Byron Blondell, raises the fingers of one hand to wave the Director away and then closes the door quietly behind himself. He stands just inside Percival’s office, one arm held tightly against his side, the other pressed across his chest, and squints at his commanding officer. Blondell is on the older side of sixty, still relatively young for a wizard and yet the demands of his profession are written clearly in the lines of his face and the deep hollows beneath his eyes. He looks old and frail, and there’s something mistrustful of the world in his gaze.

“How can I help you?” Percival asks him.

Blondell raises his hand and with a flick of his wrist summons the report sheet he’s been holding on to. He offers this up for Percival to take with a small, humourless smile. “The incursion report from last night, sir.”

Blondell has a deeper voice than his thin frame might imply, and his accent speaks of old money. Percival takes the report and casts his eyes over it, as Blondell watches him from behind hooded eyes.

“What do you make of this, Byron?” Percival asks after a moment.

“In my professional or my personal opinion, Director?” he replies mildly.

“Give me both.”

Blondell lets out a long, slow breath, and shifts his gaze to the floor. As the only remaining MACUSA-licensed summoner on active duty in New York, his opinion on this matter is invaluable. “Professionally I think every reasonable effort was made to anticipate and prevent this incursion. The VISP network is holding, but of course that’s strong only against uninitiated incursions - that is to say, those planar bleed-throughs that don’t actively involve a summoning or a summoner. This young man, Conrad Lucien Artois, was an outsider. Not known to us. We’re still not entirely certain of his point of origin, but forensics and research both agree he’s from out of town. As to why he wasn’t already under observation, well. In these troubled times, even with Grindelwald under lock and key, his followers are still out there.”

Byron pauses and Percival nods slowly. “And your personal opinion?”

The summoner blinks slowly and settles back on his heels. “We were damnably lucky. If this Mr Scamander hadn’t come to you when he did then it’s likely the situation would have gotten out of hand.”

“In what way?”

Blondell gives a stiff shrug of one shoulder. “You would have had a second level incursion loose in the city. Given free rein the beast may have ultimately gone to ground and been contained, but likely it would have caused significant collateral damage before we reached that point. Further civilian deaths, magical and no-maj. Low level mind-altering plagues and associated localised mass psychological derangement. Hard to easily cover up.”

Percival nods slowly, difficult indeed. He looks down at the report in his hands and runs his thumb pad thoughtfully along the edge of it. “And what do you think of Mr Scamander’s handling of the situation?”

Blondell’s eyes narrow just fractionally, and the Director dips his chin. “Tell me honestly, Byron.”

The summoner hesitates, then drops his gaze. His reluctance to speak is not lost on Percival. Although they may have no official guild in the US, the members of the summoning profession are nonetheless tight lipped when it comes to speaking about others of their kind. Percival understands that the group is hierarchical, occasionally aggressively so, and although he’s not privy to the exact details of their society he’s well aware of their tendency to close ranks against outsiders of any kind.

Blondell draws in a long breath, then winces when the action pulls on bruised muscles. He looks up at Percival, eyes still narrowed with reluctance, but gaze intent. “I think he did a fine job, sir. A very fine job.” He pauses, lips twisting into that same humourless smile. “That man is something different, Director Graves. He’s not like the rest of us - we tame summoners of MACUSA. He is instead what might rather crassly be referred to as ‘the real deal’.”

“What do you mean?” Percival asks softly.

Blondell’s smile turns fond, as though the question has come from the lips of a child. “He could be an arch summoner, if he wanted it, sir.”

Graves nods, although his understanding of the term is less than complete. Arch summoners are rare and skilled, dangerous and powerful. Gellert Grindelwald is well on his way to being the worst of them all. “And what do you think is stopping him?” he asks.

“That I do not know.” Blondell flares the fingers of his hand in acknowledgement of his ignorance. “Perhaps you ought to ask him, Director.”

Percival huffs quietly at the suggestion, but he nods. “Perhaps I will.”

Blondell leaves him not long after that, and Percival returns to his desk to consider the incursion report and wonder at the self-deprecating attitude of a man who might call himself tame.

 

 

*

  


The inside of the windows at Rosalind’s are jewelled with condensation. The air in the cafe is thick with warmth and the scent of coffee and cooking, the low chatter of the patrons making the place buzz with a muted energy. Percival leans back in his seat and breathes out long and slow, feeling the weight of tiredness in his eyelids and the heaviness of the food in his belly. He feels sluggish and unmoored, borne aloft by the strange lightheadedness of sleep deprivation. Newton Scamander sits opposite him, somewhat better for having spent most of the day asleep, but still subdued beneath the memory of the previous night’s incursion.

By the time Newt had arrived at MACUSA the hour had already turned towards five, and Percival had only just sent home the last of the staff still on duty from the night before. Everyone has been pulling a double-shift today, buried beneath the need to secure the city and confirm that last night’s visiting summoner had been working alone. Alongside his own incident report, Percival has personally signed off on six others, including that of Newt who had, to his surprise, turned up with a statement already written out. It’s as though the man has done all this before.

Scamander is watching him again. Percival has been able to sense the summoner’s attention on him since he first turned up this afternoon, and ever since he appears to have been keeping what Percival has concluded is supposed to be a surreptitious eye on him. Percival doesn’t think that it’s wariness making the man watchful, or even embarrassment. It’s something closer to concern, and for the life of him he can’t understand it.

“Well, Mr Scamander,” he says finally. “How are you doing?”

It’s the question that he himself hasn’t asked yet. The department healers had given Newt a once-over down at the river before they’d allowed Percival to accompany the summoner home, and he’d submitted with good grace to the second inspection he’d been forced to endure once he’d arrived back at the Woolworth Building earlier. But beyond submitting a report on his interpretation of the previous night’s events, they’ve had no time to properly discuss anything of what happened.

Newt’s smile is thin as he replies. “I believe I have you to thank for allowing me home last night?”

There’s some justification to the cautious tone of his statement, for normally, as someone involved in such an incident, Newt - a known practitioner of Void magic - would have been immediately accompanied back to the holding cells for interrogation. The strangely uncomfortable truth is that despite Newt’s role in stopping that whole thing from going wildly out of control it was only Percival’s presence and authority on the night that had allowed him to go free. Graves inclines his head in acknowledgement and pours himself more coffee.

“Well,” Newt continues. “I suppose I’m not complaining. Thank you.”

“Did you get any sleep?” Percival asks him.

“More than you did I think,” Newt replies. He hesitates, then adds, “Food is helpful. I’m glad we came out here. It’s good to be away from the, uhm, the madness of the office.”

Percival lifts his eyebrows in acknowledgement and busies himself with adding sugar to his drink. The sugar lumps are large and misshapen, and he adds two more than he normally would, craving the energy despite how it will make the coffee taste. Despite his lack of a verbal response, he is not deaf to the leading tone in Newt’s last statement, knowing very well that the man is fishing for information. He stirs the coffee slowly, then looks up to meet Newt’s eyes. The summoner is watching him from behind the fall of his fringe, and Percival wonders again what it is he’s expecting to see.

After Newt had submitted his report and Percival had gone over it, the afternoon had become stretched towards evening, and even Percival, propped up on potions and caffeine, had been forced to admit a break was required. He’d left strict instructions with his staff to summon him immediately should further incidents occur, and then he’d taken Newt with him out into the chilly city to fetch them both dinner. The summoner had not protested, and it was only when they were halfway down the street that Percival had thought anything of taking him along. He’d just assumed the man would accompany him and Newt, true to that assumption, had been right there at his side.

“I wanted to talk to you about last night.” Percival lifts the coffee to his lips and sips it with a grimace. Far too much sugar. “That’s the first incursion we’ve had in over a hundred years.”

“In New York,” Newt corrects him quietly, and Percival nods.

“In New York, yes. But you understand the significance, don’t you?”

Newt turns his teacup between his fingers, lifting them slowly away from the hot ceramic as he carefully guides the cup in a circle. He seems reluctant to speak, the set of his mouth telling Percival that he’s all too aware of the ramifications. “But we contained the creature,” he says finally. “And I assume that MACUSA will do whatever it feels necessary to prevent this from getting out.”

“People panic, Newt,” Percival says quietly, letting the cafe’s chatter cover his words. “You of all people know how Void taint spreads.”

“Oh, I know,” Newt nods. “But New York has some of the strongest VISP shielding I’ve seen. This isn’t some little town in the sticks with no defence and no summoner to protect them.”

Percival lifts one eyebrow in acknowledgement and dumps another sugar lump in his coffee. He can feel nausea bubbling in the pit of his stomach, his body unhappy with such long hours. Merlin, he’s getting old. Newt watches him do it and he sees the flicker of a frown on the summoner’s face. “Still,” Percival continues. “We have a lot more people than a town in the boondocks. That shielding is there to make sure they’re safe.”

“And that makes sense.” Newt shakes his head, dismissing the possibility of getting into an old argument. “And it’s what I’m saying. The VISP shielding will stop any ripple effects and you shouldn’t notice any further issues with the local populace at least.”

Percival looks up sharply at that and Newt shrugs one shoulder. “There will still be echoes that go outside New York’s shielding. I think that’s what happened, and that’s why that man came here like that. Even if he didn’t know it himself.”

This isn’t a new theory, and it’s already been raised in Congress as an unwanted side-effect of the magics that Grindelwald loosed beneath the city. “You think more will come?”

The fingers that are playing with the tea mug stop moving and Newt looks across the table to meet the Director’s gaze. “It’s likely.”

Percival lets out a long breath and his lips thin into an unhappy line. This is no great revelation to him, Blondell and his own experience had already told him as much, but hearing it from Newt in some way seals the assessment. He drains his coffee and stares down into the mug, wondering if more would serve him well or simply send him off the deep end into the jitters.

“You know,” he says, voice low, “I’ve fought demons before. Not unbound ones, not like last night, it’s not my speciality. That’s what the Phoenix Knights are for, as I understand it. But I have encountered them. They’re rare, I mean, you barely see such things, certainly not in New York. But my jurisdiction goes further than that, as, well, I’m sure you know.”

Newt is watching him intently, and Percival blinks at the way the man’s attention makes him feel exposed. It’s not like him to feel set on edge by anyone, but there’s something about the intensity with which this summoner looks at him that makes Percival feel as though he sees further inside his mind than he wants him to. He frowns and Newt cocks his head to listen.

“I was part of an operation that took down a cult in Georgia, some years back. They had a summoner, a local girl, too young for that kind of business. She’d built up quite a group around her though, and they weren’t doing much, but it was enough to sound alarms. She had these ah, I don’t know. Shadow demons. Looked like ribbons of blackness. They crept along the floor and then wound themselves up round your feet or reached out for your neck if you weren’t paying attention. We cleared the place out, but she banished the demons before they got loose, and that’s how we took her in.”

“Was she executed?” Newt asks softly.

Percival blinks in surprise and shakes his head. “No, she works over in Michigan now, for us.”

They stare at one another and he can tell that he’s surprised the summoner. At the end of the day Newt’s not from this country and he has some very strange ideas about how the wizarding world, the aurors in particular, function in the US. Percival is surprised to find himself mildly offended at the man’s dark assumptions. He sets down his coffee mug and draws in a breath. “I suppose what I’m getting at is that it gets worse than last night.”

Newt’s gaze returns to his briefly, and the summoner nods once. “Yes, much worse.”

“Newt,” Percival tries, then stops. He doesn’t know what he wants to ask the other man, not really. There’s a nagging doubt in him though, an anxiety that he can’t quite lay to rest. Perhaps it’s simply exhaustion setting in, the weakening of reason through sheer lack of sleep, but he doesn’t think so. There are moments of what happened last night that just do not make sense to him, and they’ve taken to resurfacing in his thoughts throughout the day like the great beasts that live in the oceans, coming up to breach the waters before dropping down again to the depths. He can’t let the thoughts alone, and something about them is putting him on edge and filling him with a feeling of slowly growing dread.

Newt is looking at him now, attention drawn by his silence. “Mr Graves?”

“Please call me Percival,” he replies. “I think we know one another well enough for that by now, don’t we?”

Still the summoner hesitates, then he smiles briefly and uncomfortably. “Percival then.”

Graves nods, still not entirely sure how to approach what he wants to say. He doesn’t have the right words, and he’s caught up by the feeling that were he to just wait this out, sleep it off, then the matter might resolve itself.

“Percival,” Newt says slowly. “If there’s something the matter, if you have any concerns about last night, about- anything. You said that you would tell me if you experienced any further side-effects. You did say that, you promised not to hide such things from me.”

Graves is not fast enough to catch and subdue his own reaction, and he knows that Newt is able to read the surprise on his face. He should have expected such insight perhaps, the man is far from stupid after all. He laughs, realising immediately how awkward it sounds, then schools his face back to sobriety. “All right, I- I do have some questions.”

Newt raises his eyebrows then glances around and Percival takes his meaning immediately. “Yes, here is not ideal. Shall we?”

With a nod Newt drains his teacup and sets it back down decisively as Graves summons over the server and with her the bill.

The streets are cold and filled with workers heading home for the evening. People’s breath steams on the air in bright clouds, and the streetlamps are just starting to make the icy sidewalks gleam. They head south through the city until they reach Central Park and then lose themselves amongst the snowy pathways, finding the ones unbroken by any footfall. Newt stays close by Percival’s side, the pair of them wrapping their coats tightly around their bodies, proof against the unseasonable cold.

“Do you think this weather is related to anything Grindelwald did?” Percival asks, tucking his scarf more tightly beneath his chin.

Newt half-shrugs, not raising his eyes from the path as he picks his way carefully through the snow. “It’s possible. It’s certainly unusual for the time of year, so the papers say anyway. I wouldn’t know personally, this is ah, my first visit.”

“It’s not normal,” Percival assures him. “But as we know, reading too much into tricks of the light makes a fool of the seer.”

“Omens are important,” Newt says. “You just need to know what’s an omen and what’s not.”

“And is this?”  
  
The summoner squints upward through the black lines of the tree branches at the darkening sky. “Maybe. We shouldn’t rule it out. Grindelwald almost tore right through the veil trying to trap Credence, and when he failed the blowback did more than just collapse that station. I think we’ll be feeling the echoes of it for some time yet.”

“He was a fool,” Percival says, mouth turning down in a frown. “I hate to say it but I expected more finesse from a man like him.”

Newt looks at him in surprise, eyebrows raised at the Director’s tone, and Graves knows that he hadn’t been expecting such a response. He pushes on, refusing to linger on the topic of the fallen summoner. Except for one point. “He could have had what he wanted, had he not been so greedy. Instead he got an innocent boy killed.”

Newt is still staring at him in open astonishment, and Percival feels a bitter sense of triumph at the reaction. _Yes,_ he thinks. _I am not entirely the heartless monster of law and duty you think me to be._ After a moment the summoner seems to gather himself, and looks away.

“What was it you wanted to discuss, uh, Percival,” Newt says eventually, stumbling from Graves’ formal title to his name instead. It sounds unfamiliar in his mouth and strangely intimate, which is a surprise to the both of them.

Percival draws in a breath then coughs as the chill of it hits the back of his throat. He really doesn’t know how to start. He doesn’t know how much of what happened last night was a normal encounter with the reality-altering monsters of the Void, and how much was...not. He doesn’t want to sound like a fool. He thinks of the sickly gleam of the demon’s skin in the lantern light, of the heaviness of its presence on the air, making the world dark and slow with dread. He thinks of how it had come up out of the water in the darkness, and he still can’t tell if he’d looked in its direction because he’d heard it or looked because he’d somehow known it was there. The thought of it has been eating away at him all day.

“I saw that beast coming before you did,” he says, letting the gathering evening dimness carry his words away.

Newt is silent for a beat, the crunch of their footsteps through the snow and the puff of their breath the only sound. He says, “You were facing in its direction.”

“I wasn’t,” Percival replies. “Not entirely. I-” he draws another long breath, thinking. There’s a part of him that just doesn’t want to get into this, doesn’t want the complications of an unknown magic, of unknown side-effects of whatever the hell black hex it was that Grindelwald had used to keep him imprisoned. But there’s a stronger part, somewhere between duty and fear, that needs to know. “I feel like I _felt_ where it was before I could see it. I looked to where it was climbing out of the water because I knew it would be there, does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Newt replies simply.

Percival waits for the summoner to say more, but Newt simply keeps on walking. “Well, is that normal?” he asks.

Beside him Newt shrugs, his expression thoughtful, gaze still fixed on picking out the path through the covering of the snow. “Sometimes. It depends. Some of these demons can be very heavy on this world, they pull at reality and you can always feel where they are by dint of how powerful they are, or the particular wyrd they have.”

“Like this one?”

Newt shakes his head. “No, this one wasn’t particularly powerful, and its wyrd, ah, its uhm, conditions of manifestation, weren’t of that nature.”

Percival stops dead, and for a moment Newt carries on past. “What the hell does that mean?”

Three paces on, Newt turns to look back at him, expression confused. “Well, er, some demons can only be brought into this world under certain conditions and have to follow a particular set of rules in order to remain, we call that a wyrd-”

“I know what a wyrd is, Newt! What- _why_ could I feel that thing if that’s not one of its- its _traits_?”

Newt meets Percival’s exasperated question with a look of confusion. “Oh, right. Well, uhm.” He lets out a short, uncomfortable breath and stuffs his hands into his pockets, looking out through the trees and away from Graves’ glare. “It’s possibly a side-effect, yes.”

For a second he risks a glance back, but when he finds Graves still starting at him in alarm he winces and looks away. “Mr Graves, sorry, Percival,” he says softly. “Please don’t be too alarmed by this. You were exposed to Void magic for a long time and uhm, I think this isn’t the worst of side-effects. Being able to sense the proximity of similar magics or creatures of that particular nature is not necessarily a most terrible thing to, ah, to have access to. Is it?”

Percival is still staring at him unhappily. No, it’s not the worst of side-effects but it’s not normal and it’s not the whole story, is it? “When I looked into its eyes I felt like the world went black. Like I lost control of myself, of what I was doing. Is that expected too, Mr Scamander?”

Newt’s eyes narrow and he leans forward, mouth parting slightly. “What do you mean precisely? Can you describe it for me in more detail?”

He can, but he doesn’t want to. Just the memory of that eyeless stare, the depth of ancient, unfathomable malevolence that he’d seen in the demon’s featureless face, it brings out a prickle of sweat across his shoulders. Percival blinks and his body betrays him with a flinch that makes Newt lift one hand from the warmth of his coat and take a step in his direction. “I’m fine,” he says, and the summoner halts.

“Just tell me again what you felt,” Newt says softly.

Percival’s lips press into a tight, unhappy line. “I suppose that I was angry.” His words come out flat against the muffling blanket of snow that lies all around them. The evening is fading fast, leaving Newt’s face pale in the lowering gloom. They will need to head inside soon or risk freezing themselves out here. “I wanted to stop it from having its way and I thought I could, I don’t know, I don’t know what I was thinking. I just stepped up between you, and I apologise that was _stupid_ of me, but- I looked it in the eye and I felt like I was...dying. Like it got hold of me somehow. Like it latched on and I was reading it in some way. Are you a legilimens at all, Mr Scamander?” When Newt shakes his head Percival nods. “Well, it felt a little like that, but without any effort on my part. I felt as though there was, fuck. I felt some kind of connection. And it was like being dragged down, dragged in - does that make sense?”

Newt meets his desperate gaze for a second and holds it. Then he looks away again, out across the wide expanse of snowy parkland towards the lights of the city blocks beyond. He appears to be considering his response carefully, weighing up something in the privacy of his thoughts, leaving Percival cold and anxious while he waits. “Mr Graves, I think it might be best if you allowed me to give you a few items that will help you with this.”

Percival raises his eyebrows and shakes his head once, but not in denial. “Is there something wrong?” he asks.

Newt does turn back to look at him then, and his smile is stiff, but not forced. “I have some things that may be able to help you with what you experienced. They’ll help stabilise the reactions you’re having, and ah, stop you from feeling light-headed if you encounter any more Void magic.”

“But _why_ am I feeling this way?” Percival presses him, concern starting to turn to the first beginnings of frustration. That emotion is far easier for him to deal with than the unpleasantness of the fear that’s been slithering inside him.

Newt meets his eyes and offers another quick half smile. “I think we should discuss this somewhere that I have access to my tools, so I can give you a more accurate answer.”

Seeing that he’ll make no further headway on this right now, Graves dips his head in acquiescence, and raises a hand. “Lead on then.”

Newt reaches hesitantly for the Director’s arm, an invitation to side-along that Percival accepts with a single nod. They disapparate with a crack of displaced air, leaving behind them a swirl of snowflakes and a strange patterning across the snow that tomorrow morning a group of children will find and exclaim over, until the sun rises far enough to melt it away forever.

  


*

  


Newt’s rented room is cold enough that Percival can see his breath steaming on the air. He looks around the place with a frown, noting the dead fireplace and antiquated radiator, neither of which appear to have been used in some time. The furnishings are respectable enough, if simplistic, and all in all it’s not the worst place Percival can think a man might call home, but that’s because he doesn’t have to live in it.

Newt, having secured the door behind them with bolt and spell,  is busy setting his case down in the middle of the floor. Percival turns to watch him, frowning when he hears the latches on the thing click. Newt raises the lid then stands to look at him. “Right then, uhm. I suppose well, just please watch your step. The ladder is very steep.”

Percival’s eyebrows shoot up despite himself, and he looks from Newt to the case. The summoner is already making his way down inside to what Percival understands is his personal laboratory, disappearing rapidly into the depths below. This is an unexpected turn of events. Percival is not unaware of what lies within the summoner’s case, but he’s not yet had the incredibly dubious honour of being invited down into the man’s lair. He takes a cautious step to the edge of the case and peers down at Newt’s retreating head.

“Pull the lid closed behind you until you hear it click please,” Newt calls up to him.

After only a moment’s more hesitation, Percival does as he is bidden, with only a little difficulty for the angle is awkward and this is first time he’s ever had to climb inside a suitcase.

The ladder descends down through nearly eight feet of what Graves suspects is solid iron. The tunnel is narrow, lit at intervals by enchanted crystals set in holders into the walls, their light casting a white-blue radiance across the dull metal. Warding symbols and catcher sigils are etched into the surrounding surfaces, and he can feel the prickle of protective magics raising the hairs on his forearms as he descends. It’s a tight, vaguely claustrophobic fit, and he’s glad to reach the end of the ladder. With a soft snap-hum, Newt reactivates the shield that covers the end of the exit tunnel, and Percival takes a moment to look around.

He finds himself in a small, lamp-lit laboratory, the walls lined with untidy shelves crammed with books and arcane devices Percival is only half-certain he recognises. There are racks of vials, bunches of herbs hung up to dry, glassware and potions paraphernalia all over the place, including on the long benches that line three and a half walls, that remaining half being given over to an unmade cot that looks as though it’s only recently been vacated. Percival looks, and then double-takes, for he is being glared at from the cot by a bundle of black fur with two enormous amber feline eyes.

“Ah, don’t mind her, that’s just Cissy, she’s a uhm, Kneazle. I have a permit.”

The Kneazle glares at him and hisses with feline disgust, and Graves makes himself not take a step backwards. “I’m sure you do,” he says blankly. Of all the beasts Newt might need a permit for and he’s concerned about a Kneazle.

“Cissy, mind your manners!” Newt admonishes her, and then casts around before shifting a pile of books off a nearby chair and pushing it in Graves’ direction. “Ah, here you go, sit down please.”

Carefully Percival obeys, half an eye on the unhappy Kneazle, the rest of his attention straying to the great iron door set into the fourth wall of the laboratory. There’s a heavy metal bar settled in place across its width, and the edges are inscribed with warding runes. A row of dials are inset into its surface, their arrows all pointed towards the green.

Percival had read about the interior of Newt’s case in the reports that were passed his way once he’d returned to work. Beyond that door there supposedly lies the man’s collection of Void oddities, from beasts to artefacts. This place is reputedly a veritable museum of the black arts, and only by dint of the fact he’s somehow had the thing categorised as a secure dwelling has he been allowed to take it travelling. That and the truly phenomenal level of warding spells, anti-theft mechanisms and outright death traps the place has rigged up. As far as Graves is aware trying to break in, or out, of here would be like throwing yourself face-first into a dragon’s maw. That having been said the reports had also mentioned that Grindelwald himself had made it down into this case, although as Percival understands it he’d found himself stymied by whatever locking charms Newt uses and as such had never managed to pass beyond that great iron door.

“Right then, if you don’t mind I’d just like to run a few tests,” Newt says, and Percival turns to look up at him.

“Tests?”  
  
“Observations really. I’d like to make sure I’m saying the right thing to you, drawing the correct conclusions, you understand? Don’t worry, nothing invasive or painful. You’ll barely notice I’m doing anything.”

Somehow Percival doesn’t feel reassured. Nonetheless he sits back as Newt brings out a selection of charms and crystal rods, laying the items against his skin and touching them to his forehead, his chest, and once even to the soles of his feet. Few of them give him any discernible reaction when used, save for a pair of thin silver rods that make him feel alarmingly dizzy when Newt passes them over his head, as though he might at any moment fall off the chair. Newt merely hums to himself thoughtfully and puts them away. Throughout it all the Kneazle stares at Percival with her amber eyes, settling back down comfortably amongst the rumpled blankets of the cot.

“Well?” Percival says finally, once Newt has put away the last of his instruments.

The summoner pushes aside a stack of papers and a book, then settles himself on the edge of the workbench to look at Percival across folded arms. “I think that the best way to explain this to you is that old Muggle phrase about looking into the void, are you familiar with it?”

“And the void looks back, yes,” Percival agrees warily.

“Well, for once they hit the nail on the head, so to speak,” Newt continues. He seems about to say something, then changes his mind, and Percival doesn’t like the way the other man won’t lift his eyes from the floor to meet his. Newt is rarely direct but he’s definitely being avoidant here and it’s not helping Percival’s anxiety in the least.

“What is it, what is wrong with me?” he demands.

Newt shakes his head and glances sideways at him from the corner of his eye. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he replies softly. “You must believe me on that, Mr Graves. I swear to you most solemnly that nothing is _wrong_ with you.”

“Then _what_?” Percival asks, leaning forward in the chair, palms raised in supplication. Newt looks away from the gesture and reaches for a box on the shelf. It’s a little smaller than a shoe box, and he holds it across his stomach, tracing the edges of the lid with his thumbs.

“Newt, for the love of God…”

“I think what has happened, Mr Graves, is that your exposure to Void magic has left you sensitive to it. I think that you have a sensitivity to that type of magic now which...may not go away. _But_ I must stress that this doesn’t make you cursed or, or-”

Percival waits for a beat, but Newt does not continue. “Or?”

“I don’t know. I just want to stress that you’re not a demon now or anything of the sort.”

Percival can feel his eyebrows raised as high as they’ll go and knows that his expression must be one of stark shock. “Why would I think that? Newt, I can’t really, look I don’t fully understand what you’re getting at here.”

Newt laughs quietly, more a vaguely hysterical breath than any true expression of amusement. “No, I suppose not. Please, I’m just saying that you mustn’t be concerned, and you mustn’t fret, but you probably ought not to tell anyone else about this. It might- well. It would probably damage your reputation.”

Percival leans back in his chair and breathes out slowly. This is an unexpected turn of events, and he’s having trouble reading the man standing across from him. Newt is staring at a point somewhere around Percival’s shoes, his expression unhappy, body tense and tight, and Graves knows the reputation his kind have, the reputation Void magic has, the one that this summoner apparently fears. It’s not entirely unfounded.

“What exactly does this mean for me?” he asks, his voice carefully calm.

Newt breathes in, and nods. He turns the box between his hands and there’s no sound from the contents within. “It means you might be able to sense Void magic, that’s all. You can’t be controlled or possessed because of that. Think of it like being...able to see another colour?”

Percival doesn’t return the weak smile the summoner gives him, not for a single moment reassured by his words. “What’s in the box?”

“Ah, right. Well. You said that you felt dizzy, yes? When the demon came too close to you? These may be able to help you with that.” Newt raises the box and then sets it on the workbench, taking a key from inside his jacket pocket. The lock opens with a click and he lifts the lid. Percival peers around his side, and Newt unclips from their place on a bedding of dark fabric a pair of silver engraved torque bracelets. They gleam in the lamp light, chasing fire along their smooth curves, the sigils on their surface etched in a magical language with which the Director is not familiar.

“What are those?” Percival asks slowly.

Newt holds them out, one on each palm, so that he can lean in to examine them. “Think of them as somewhere between foci and stabilisers.”

Percival glances up at him, and Newt offers up the bracelets with a bob of his palms. With only the slightest of frowns Graves reaches out and takes one. The bracelet is light and when he cautiously casts his magical senses over it he picks up no inherent charm running on them. “Just foci?” he queries.

Newt nods. “All they do is attune to your magic and help you sense what they’ve been inscribed to focus on. In this case Void magic. And, as I said, they have runes of stabilisation on the inside curve which should prevent that dizziness you felt. There’s some extra warding too, just for good measure, to ah, bolster your natural resistance.”  


Percival turns the curve of metal between his fingertips so that the sigils catch the light. He doesn’t recognise any of them. “Why do you have these?”

Newt hesitates, and in that pause Percival can read all he needs to know. “You knew,” he says softly.

“No, _no,_ ” Newt protests hurriedly. “I _suspected._ I prepared, Mr Graves. There’s a difference. And since I have been appointed to care for you and- and _assist_ during your recovery it would have been completely remiss of me not to anticipate any potential requirements you might have. Mental or otherwise.”

Percival sits back in his chair, watching the summoner. Newt will not meet his eyes and is again staring down at the floor around their feet, his manner uncomfortable and that fierce tension back in his body. He’s upset, Percival can read that well enough. Offended perhaps. Fearful of the response to his attempt at assistance.  

Graves is well aware of his own reputation as man without patience or sympathy for criminals, and the majority of criminals that he deals with on a personal level are practitioners of the Dark Arts. It’s translated over the years to a reputation for hating all dark magic, but of course, there’s Dark Arts and then there’s Dark Arts. The difference is in the intent. The reality as he knows it is that the intentions of most practitioners are entirely, depressingly, predictable.  

“How do I use them?” he asks.

Newt blinks and then looks up at him, something somewhere between surprise and hope on his face, and immediately Percival feels his mouth tightening and that old anger stirring in his stomach. He’s exhausted, he still feels sick, and he doesn’t really have the energy to deal with other people’s misconceptions right now. That Newt, summoner though he is, should be so wary of him just makes him want to give up. He hasn’t spent thirty years as an auror for the people he’s trying to protect to fear him so reflexively, and despite his chosen profession Newt still falls under his protection.

And yet still the man hesitates. Percival sighs and looks up at him. “Newt, if I’ve given you reason to distrust me then I apologise. I am...a proud man. I appreciate your expertise in this matter, and I will, as I have promised, work with you.”

Newt has his head tilted so that he can look through his scruffy fringe at Percival, and for perhaps the longest time he holds Graves’ gaze. Then he gestures for him to hold out his wrists, and says, “You just put them on and they’ll do the rest.”

“That simple?”

“That simple,” Newt confirms.

“And I can remove them at any time?”

Again, Newt nods. “Remove them yourself, cast with them, carry on as you normally would.” Percival allows him to slip the bracelets around his wrists, pressing on the ends a little to secure the fit. They’re lightweight and fit without being overly loose. He thinks that he should be able to conceal them behind his cuffs if he wears them carefully.

“It’s definitely all right to remove them as necessary?” he asks, shaking his hands to settle them in place.

“Don’t take them off for more than an hour or two,” Newt replies. “They take around twelve hours to attune to you properly before they’ll be most efficient and if you leave them off for longer you’ll just have to attune them again. Like I said, they won’t work very efficiently yet, but you should notice some effect immediately.”

Percival holds out his arms, examining the bracelets closely. “I suppose there’s no way to test them until we get into another situation, which, believe me, I am not keen to experience again.”

He feels rather than sees Newt’s hesitation, and when he looks up at him with raised eyebrows, Newt shrugs and says, “Well, I suppose we could see how you do with the Migen?”

At Graves’ look of incomprehension, Newt nods and takes off his coat, tossing it across the bed. “All right, come on. Oh, ah, keep your coat on, it can get chilly out there.”

Percival rises to his feet, “Out where?”

He gets his answer when Newt takes out his wand, tapping it against the bar that lies across the great iron door that takes up most of the space on the far side of the cramped laboratory. The sigils on its surface glow a frosty white and emit a nearly soundless hum that sets Percival’s teeth on edge, and for a second he has to fight the urge to ready a shielding spell.

“Please,” says Newt. “Once we’re beyond this door you must remain close to me at all times, and not make any attempt to pass through any barriers unless I give you permission. Do you understand?”

Graves nods, still uncertain about this whole turn of events, but when Newt raises his eyebrows meaningfully, he says, “Yes, I understand. Do not cross any barriers without your permission.”

“Right. Stay on the path, stay with me. Oh, and don’t try to touch anything.”

The great iron door opens inwards soundlessly, and a blast of icy air rushes into the room bringing with it a sterile smell of bleach and purification incenses. Beyond, a corridor stretches off into darkness, lit dimly by low-hanging lamps. Every wall seems made of the same cold, featureless iron, the only break in the monotony of metal coming from what must be doors set nearly flush with the walls, barred and bolted. Along every surface a sheen of flickering runes pulses in time to some unknown beat, their intricately wrought lines composing shielding and warding spells in every known magical language.

Percival realises that Newt is watching him closely, and he swallows, straightening up and closing his mouth. He wants to ask what the hell Newt is keeping down here to require so much warding, but then he already knows that, doesn’t he? Some of it, anyway. “Are we…?” _Going in there?_ he wants to ask. It’s just a corridor, and yet that cold, gloomy stretch is raising the hair on the back of his neck.

“If you feel up to it,” Newt replies gently.

Percival looks at him, taken aback by the kindness he hears in the man’s voice. He knows at once that should he decide to say no, Newt will simply close the door and nothing more will be said on the matter. The man’s sincerity shakes him to the core, and he feels a twinge of discomfort for ever having labelled him a swerver. There’s a soft squeaking of springs from the cot’s mattress and the Kneazle pulls herself out from her nest of blankets, jumping to the floor with a soft thud of paws and making her unconcerned way past Newt and out into the corridor beyond. Percival watches her go, the tip of her tail twitching an unhurried rhythm.

“All right,” he says. “Show me what’s out there.”

Stepping into the corridor, to his surprise, does not fill him with an immediate sense of dread. Percival stands quietly, looking around at the flickering sigils that shimmer across the walls, as Newt seals and bolts the door behind them. It closes with a sound of such dramatic finality that Percival feels laughter threaten to bubble up in his throat. He pushes it down, well aware that it would make him seem hysterical to start giggling like a fool now.

“All right then?” Newt says cheerfully, as he steps past. “Come on, we’re not going far. Just a few doors down. Remember, please don’t try to touch anything.”

There are demons down here, Percival knows. Not many, but one demon is more than enough. Artefacts too, according to the permit he’d seen. Some of them demonic, many of them what some would call holy. All of them under the protection of one Newton Scamander.

Newt leads him down the corridor past the first two doors, one set to the left, the other to the right, the Kneazle trailing along at his heels. Percival follows them both, keeping to the middle of the corridor and squinting at the sigils he can see written on each door. There are dials on these portals too, just like the ones on the inside of the laboratory, all of them, to his relief, pointing to the green.

They come to a pause outside the third door, and Newt turns to him. “Right then, this is the Migen chamber. You’ll probably recognise them when you see them since they tend to turn up in those awful one-Knut horror books they sell on the Diagon Alley stalls. Don’t worry, they’ll be behind the wards and can’t get out to you, but I advise you strongly against trying to look into their eyes. It can give you quite a funny turn, wards or not. When we’re in there I just want you to see how you feel, if you get any kind of reaction like you did last night. Now, ready?”

 _Not really,_ Percival thinks to himself, but he nods anyway, and Newt takes out his wand to unlock the door. To Percival’s surprise there’s a tiny chamber beyond, forming an airlock that’s just big enough for the two of them to stand in together. Once inside Newt locks the outer door behind them securely, reactivating the wards with another flick of his wand.

“Here we go, no! Cissy, you stay in here, be a good girl now.”

Percival’s muscles are aching with tension by this point. Newt appears entirely unconcerned, more interested in keeping the Kneazle away from the inner door with the toe of one foot than he is with worrying about what’s on the other side of the next portal. The inner door opens soundlessly, and it takes all of Percival’s willpower not to draw his wand. A waft of fresh, outdoor air flows into their little airlock, filling the space with the cool scent of dew-damp grass, and spilling moonlight across the toes of their feet. The space beyond is far larger than it has any right to be, the sight of it so unexpected even though the reports had been more than clear on the way this place is set up. Before them there is the crest of a low hill, bounded on one side by a dark stretch of trees and by nothing but open starry sky on all others. There on the very top of the rise, but a strong stone’s throw away, a small herd of animals is grazing quietly, their backs silver in the light of the low-hanging full moon.

Percival stares through the open portal and it takes him a moment to realise that the pressure he feels around his upper arm is Newt’s fingers, holding him securely. The man is looking at him with interest, carefully monitoring the expression on Percival’s face, ready to close the door again at the slightest indication that it should be necessary.   

“Are we going inside?” Percival manages over the insistent pounding of his heart.

Newt shakes his head. “No, we’ll watch from here I think.”

Percival narrows his eyes, looking out across the moonlit landscape. Nothing appears out of the ordinary, other than the vast space that’s somehow opened up before them. Extension charms and exceptionally clever illusions, he knows from his reading. Newt has remarkable skill in both areas, abilities that he’s put to great use in creating this little museum of horrors of his.

Percival frowns at the grazing animals, wondering what it is he should be seeing, or even feeling. There’s nothing here that feels particularly demonic in nature. “Are those...Mooncalves?” he asks hesitantly.

“Hmm,” Newt hums, voice quietly amused. “No, they are most certainly not. Though many people make that same comparison.”

Turning to the side he pulls a crate out from a stack of shelves that Percival hadn’t noticed, and lifts the lid. A cloud of icy water vapour puffs from inside, carrying with it the scent of rotten meat, and Percival draws back with a grimace. Pulling on a long rubber glove Newt delves deep inside and comes out with a bundle of dead rats, held by their tails. “Now, the ward starts three feet from the edge of the door, you can just see the silver edge where it meets the grass, yes? Right, don’t step beyond that please. In fact, stay inside the airlock for now. No, Cissy, _bugger,_ that means you too!”

With a quick movement Percival swoops down and grabs the Kneazle by the scruff of her neck, lifting her into his arms and pressing her against his chest. Surprised, the beasts holds still, the angular warmth of her body tight against his ribs feeling strangely welcome in this bizarre place. Newt looks at him in astonishment, and Percival says, “My sister has Kneazles.”

“Ah, right. Well, wonderful. That told you, Cissy girl.” Then the summoner turns and steps out into the moonlight, raises the fingers of his free hand to his lips, and lets out a piercing whistle that cuts through the false night like a blade.

On the hillside the grazing beasts lift their heads as one, bulbous skulls swivelling on long, sinuous necks as they turn to face the doorway. In that moment Percival understands all too clearly that the beasts are not Mooncalves.

“Remember, don’t stare them in the eyes for too long,” he hears Newt say.

The creatures do not bound down the hill as their gentler counterparts do. Instead they move at a strange, gliding run that looks somehow unreal, as though they’re floating along across the darkened grass. Their bizarrely huge, amber eyes reflect the moonlight, making shadows of their lumpy bodies and drawing the eye up and away from their bared bone jaws. Those jaws, as becomes rapidly apparent as the beasts draw nearer, are long and hinged like a wolf’s, the line of their mouths extending back unnaturally into their very necks. They’re ugly and awkward, even as they move with an eerie grace, and Percival does remember them now from those one-Knut horror books that he’d enjoyed as a boy. If the illustrations in those are anything to go by, those low-slung jaws can open unnaturally wide, far enough to encompass a man’s head in a single bite. The Migen come sliding down the hillside now towards the doorway, and as they come he can hear them bleating and calling, their reedy little voices like the babbling of playful children.

“My god,” he mutters in disgust, and Cissy mewls as he presses her tighter against his chest.

“Easy now,” Newt replies. “They won’t come beyond the wards. How are you doing in there?”

How is he doing? Exhaustion and nausea have both been forgotten in the face of the Migen’s presence, and disgust is making him grimace and fight the urge to step back, but it’s not the same formless, heavy dread that had assailed him on the night of the incursion. These creatures, they’re unpleasant, but even as they draw close and the stink of them, rotten meat breath and sour milk sweat, reaches his nose he realises that it’s different. They’re foul and their fluting little voices make his flesh crawl in disgust, but they lack the overpowering menace of the water demon. In truth, Percival has no doubt that he could deal with these beasts on his own and he’s not sure if that’s a false bravado loaned to him by the protection of the bracelets, or if they’re simply somehow lesser monsters. He says as much to Newt, who is already busy tossing out the rotting rats for the Migen to fight over.

“Oh, it’s certainly possible. The Migen are minor demons anyway, they ah, _don’t fight!_ Yes, they have solid physical forms that they’re bound to. What I mean is they look like this when they’re on their home Void plane, same as they look here. It means they’re not as powerful, and they don’t bend reality here like higher demons do. I mean, it’s not quite as simple as that, but you get the idea.”

Percival watches the beasts snap and squabble over the rotten flesh, and mentally tests his own reactions. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to be looking for, or even feeling, but he’s well aware of Newt out of the corner of his eye, watching him with a hawk’s intensity.

“They seemed so peaceful from a distance,” he says over the snapping and crunching of bone.

“Well actually,” Newt shrugs. “As far these things go, they are. That having been said, I wouldn’t lie down too long in the same field as them, or they’ll definitely try to eat you.”

Percival snorts at the grin on the summoner’s face, not sure whether he should be amused or horrified. In truth, all he feels is light-headed from tiredness, and wired from too much caffeine. “Look, I have no idea if these bracelets are having any effect whatsoever, but what I can tell you is that those damned things smell absolutely foul, and I think I’m done being exposed to them now.”

Newt smirks in amusement, then tosses the last of the rats out to be eaten before backing into the airlock and pushing the door closed behind him. Percival has to step back until he’s pressed up against the other door, the Kneazle still pulled tightly into his chest. “Sorry,” Newt says. “I didn’t build this place to fit more than just me really.”

Percival watches as the summoner pulls off the glove and puts it back in its place on the shelf. “Why do you even have them?”

Newt turns, eyebrows raised in query. “What, the Migen? Well, they have a number of uses actually. They’re good little warning beasts since they respond very quickly to the presence of other Void entities. And their venom is useful in making certain potions.”

“They’re venomous?” Percival asks, as Newt shuffles him to the side in order to get to the outer door.

“Oh yes, very. As I said, don’t try taking a nap in their enclosure, it might look very peaceful in there, but there could be, ah, complications - sorry, can I just reach round you there? Right, wonderful.”

They step out of the airlock and back into the gloom of the passage beyond, away from the silvery moonlight and the scent of rotting rat, and now that dreadful smell is gone Percival lets his breathing return to normal. He can feel his heart rate slowing again, and wonders if the bracelets had been any help at all.

While Newt bars and resets the warding spells on the Migen’s chamber, Percival turns to stare down the corridor. It stretches into the distance, far past the point where there are lamps to light the way, an unending black void that makes him shiver. The place is dry and sterile, but something about it makes him want to leave. “What else do you have down here?” he asks.

Newt turns from the door and slides his wand back into his pocket. He looks from Percival’s face to the stretch of darkened corridor and then bobs his head in a small, noncommittal gesture. “Nothing to worry about, Mr Graves. Everything down here is quite safe where it is. There’s nothing that can get out to you.”

Any other time perhaps Percival might have bristled at the assumption that he fears for his own safety, or maybe read the words as the deflection they clearly are, but right now he’s listening to the echoless silence and wondering what sort of man would sleep in a cot so close to this place, separated from it by only a single iron door. Warded or not, with metal as thick as his forearm, still just the thought of sleeping so close to this place sets him on edge.

“Mr Graves? Percival?”

Newt is looking at him closely when Percival finally snaps out of his distraction. “Ah, yes. I was-”

The summoner is smiling at him apologetically, nodding towards his chest. “I think Cissy wants to get down. It’s all right, she’ll follow us back into the lab on her own.”

With a start Percival realises that the beast is straining against his grip, and loosens his arms to let her slip to the floor, before busying himself with brushing off his lapels. Embarrassed to have been caught out of sorts he frowns down at the Kneazle, feeling the weight of Newt’s attention like a physical pressure. The man is in his element down here and clearly has nothing to fear. Here, by law even, he and not Percival has right of authority. Even so this menagerie of extraplanar beasts and artefacts is beyond the typical venture of any summoner that Percival has ever heard of, even those of the most notoriously eccentric branches of the British Isles.

“Why do you do this, Mr Scamander?” he asks suddenly.

Newt blinks at the question, seeming taken aback. For a second, just before he had spoken, Percival had thought the man might have been going to reach out for his arm.

“I have an affinity for the work, Mr Graves,” Newt replies simply.

“Your family bloodline,” Percival remembers, thinking of the Scamander branch family that has for centuries run a thread of darker magic beneath the vaunted stock of aurors its main line normally produces.

“That too,” Newt shrugs. Then he turns away, back towards the door that will lead them to his cramped little laboratory. “Come on, we should get back inside and warm up, don’t you think? I’ve probably used up too much of your time already tonight, and you’ll be wanting to get home to bed. You can let those bracelets settle in while you catch up on some sleep.”

Percival stares at the man’s retreating back, but that position leaves him with his own back to the long stretch of the corridor, and the skin between his shoulder blades starts to itch. Newt is right, he _is_ tired, closer to exhausted really. The day has been long and his potions are starting to wear off. Perhaps tomorrow this tension in him will be gone.

With one last look over his shoulder he follows the summoner back to what he can only think of as safety, leaving the dark and the demons behind.

  


*

 

  
The rest of the month passes in freezing nights and bitterly cold days. Newt finishes the calibration of the east-side VISP network, bringing it back into line with the rest of the grid that keeps New York safe from extraplanar incursions. The work is, despite the circumstances that have led to it, really rather interesting to him. The city’s defensive magics have been built to last, and he appreciates on a professional level the sheer skill that went into their creation all those years ago. Still though, he’s been living in this city for almost three months now, longer than he’d ever expected to be here, and soon his excuses for remaining will start to wear thin, no matter what Picquery might say.

Newt spends what free time he has paying in gold for the services of his little seeker, sending it out into the shadowed alleyways and hidden crannies of a city with ten thousand places to hide, and each time it returns empty-handed he becomes a little more certain that what he seeks is no longer in New York at all. The disappointment this causes him he buries beneath the unaccustomed business of a social life. The Goldstein sisters and their friends amongst the ministry, what few they have that is, are a novel experience for Newt. He’s not used to being asked over for dinner each week and actually wanting to go. The sisters feed him on pie and gossip, and it’s from them that he hears that Kowalski is still in New York, and has opened his own bakery. Newt’s pleased for the muggle, even if he does feel a twinge of sadness at the thought that he will never again be able to sit down and talk with him. It is undoubtedly for the best, although that thought sounds treacherously like the kind of sensible option Theseus might trot out and thus is immediately of questionable validity.

The Director of Magical Security continues to work himself half to death, and Newt can only bite his tongue over the desire to tell the man to lay off just a little, for all their sakes. Still, the calibration work and a strange sense of camaraderie have kept the pair of them in closer contact than Newt could ever have expected. Picquery may have brought Newt here to do a job, but she hadn’t provided an easy course by which to see it through, and so Newt, albeit somewhat guiltily, can only be grateful for the attitudes of the press and the subsequent way in which it’s pushed and continues to push the pair of them together. If the Director is seen out with the ‘Saviour of New York’, and Merlin but Newt cringes visibly every time he hears those words, then it’s simply a sign that the right people are keeping an eye on each other.

They do not talk again of strange forebodings and broken sleep, of demonic premonitions or poorly understood dread. The topic of unwanted side-effects is allowed to slide, and when Newt asks, hesitant and unsure of himself, how Percival is feeling now, the man simply shrugs and says that he feels as though he has returned to normal. He blames his fears on tiredness and the stress of the last few weeks, but Newt notes that he does not remove the bracelets that he was given, and not a day goes by when Newt doesn’t catch just the slightest glint of them through the opening at the man’s shirt cuffs. Life, for want of a better word, becomes routine once more. Even so, as they continue their work together, settled into a pattern that has allowed their awkward tolerance of one another to fade into something more natural, almost easy, there remains the question of what will come next.

Despite the predictions of every Void-fluent mage in the city, from MACUSA’s pet summoner Blondell to Newt himself, there are no further Void incursions. No other summoners turn up in the suburbs plying a dark trade or sacrificing their souls to terrorise the local populace, no rash of tainted plague or Void madness spreads throughout the city, and nor do any omens turn the skies dark with their presence. Still, all those who understand such things go about their business with bated breath and tense muscles, waiting, as they say, for the other shoe to drop. Newt is unhappy in a way that he cannot quite articulate, for life has taught him that worrying may be pointless, but cynicism is not, and because he remains so very wary, so too does Percival.

It is the end of March when the weather breaks, the winter’s long, cold grip on the land finally loosening. The snow begins to melt and the first hints of spring begin to poke their way above the earth. The papers turn to congratulating one another on the correct prediction of an end to the harshest winter in living memory, and refocus their attention on the business of preparing for the upcoming seasonal festivals. Life, for most, returns to normal.

Newt and the Director are in one of the warded clean-labs off the corridor that leads to the Major Investigations bull pen when the messenger finds them. Newt has a protective charm that he’s fashioned draped over the back of his hand, turning it so that Percival can examine the sigils inscribed across its surface. At the interruption he sets about laying this back in its case, securing it in place with little silver clips as Graves unfolds the letter that he has been handed and casts his eyes over its contents.

It takes Newt longer than it should to notice how still the other man has gone. It’s actually the armour that the messenger is wearing that catches his attention first once he finally gets round to looking up. The woman is dressed in standard MACUSA long coat and smart trousers, but she’s wearing a leather vest that on closer inspection is quite clearly both reinforced and spell-resistant, and from the fit of her trousers there’s some kind of padding beneath those too. Newt squints, recognising that an armoured messenger carries only messages of great import, and it’s only then that he realises that Percival Graves has gone an awful shade of white.

“Percival..?” he asks warily.

It takes a second before the Director responds. He doesn’t look at Newt but he hands the letter sideways to him as he addresses the messenger. “Inform the President I will hold a meeting immediately in the Opal Room. Don’t delay.”

Newt looks down at the paper in his hands, noting at once the official seals that head the page, and the stark, black **_TOP SECRET CLEARANCE ESPER ALPHA_** printed in bold across its width. There are an awful lot of dates and names and acronym-heavy sentences to take in, but his eyes fall with fatalistic inevitability to the one sentence that matters the most.

“Merlin’s beard,” he whispers, at once shocked and yet somehow entirely unsurprised.

In clipped official language, the letter formally and with all due apologies, advises him that Gellert Grindelwald has escaped.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not a friendly, happy case, is it? I loved Newt’s case in the original film, but I can’t imagine firstly that the various governments wouldn’t lock him up and toss away the key for travelling around the world with a swarm of demons in a badly locked suitcase, and secondly that this Newt would be so unprofessional as to do so. Demons really do eat people. Hence this instead.
> 
> I know that was a long chapter, but I wanted to get it all in and you can't rush Percival Graves getting his head round being Void sensitive now, can you? Next few chapters should be a bit shorter. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!


	6. Slip the Leash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What to do with the world's most potent Void summoner in the wind? Graves has one idea, Congress has another. Newt has his own plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, I had an RL daemon to fight. Back on track now I hope. :]

Seraphina Picquery stands on a raised dais at the front of the meeting chamber and holds up her hand for silence. The glow of the electric lights catches the gold stitching on the robes of the two Phoenix Knights that flank her, and it’s the weight of their cool, impassive gazes that finally stills the room.  

“Now is not the time for blame,” Picquery says, her dark eyes pinning the loudest protesters down. “Grindelwald is in the wind, and we have to focus on retrieving him. The Knights of the Phoenix already have their agents in pursuit, and in the meantime they have assigned two of their number to the protection of the city.”

The small emergency meeting room is packed with high ranking Congress members and senior members of the Department of Magical Security. Percival Graves stands at the foot of the dais, his face grim, playing the part of the President’s attack dog just as he always has, although Newt is surprised to realise that he can see the strain in the man’s face. Newt himself is standing towards the side of the room, hidden half behind the bulk of a hulking wizard whose breadth of shoulders speaks of the giant blood running in his veins. Percival had left Newt at the door to attend to the President’s needs, and Newt had scarpered sideways and into the shadows without comment. Better no-one really notice him here - after all he’s already too closely tied to Gellert Grindelwald in the minds of the people.

The thought of the dark wizard sends a chill across Newt’s skin in the way that no demon ever can. Grindelwald frightens him on a deep and fundamental level. The man has a wild and deadly ingenuity and absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for anything or anyone that he cannot use. It’s not the power of him, or the clever spells he weaves, it’s his absolute and entirely remorseless disregard for others that disturbs Newt so deeply. A man like Grindelwald can send half the world to the Void before they’ve even realised what he is. Despite the heat from so many people packed into too little space, Newt shivers. If Grindelwald is free, then- he stops himself. Fear is the enemy, and worrying does nothing more than undermine a person’s intent.

A witch in red robes is speaking, gesturing towards the front of the room, and people around her are nodding along. Newt tries to focus on her words, shaking off his concerns and forcing himself to breathe, to calm down. But the stakes are too high for calm, he knows that. If Grindelwald is on the loose then the first thing he’s going to do is go hunting again, and that means Newt is going to have to step up his own efforts or risk allowing the most deadly Void summoner in centuries have free run at whatever demon he feels like picking out. The thought of that sends a chill right through Newt and he shivers. If they let that happen that damned death bird will be the least of their worries.

“It is my duty and my responsibility as Director of Magical Security to take personal control of this situation.”

Percival is speaking, and it’s the hard edge of anger in his voice that catches Newt’s attention and finally drags him out of his panic. The man is still posed at the foot of the dais, a dark contrast in his black coat and suit to the white robes of the two Phoenix Knights. And _he’s_ going to be another problem, Newt thinks to himself. Grindelwald must know by now that Graves is no longer trapped, had probably felt it the moment Newt had brought him back. Does that make him a target? No, surely not. Newt had been too careful, they’d gone over it more times than he can remember. There’s no longer any gain for Grindelwald where Percival is concerned. That debt has been paid.

“Unfortunately, Director, this Congress does not agree. We feel that you are better placed here in New York City defending the populace and the centre of the administration, than you are tearing across the countryside in search of a man who, frankly, has already proven that he is more than capable of handling you.”

Newt draws in a breath, surprised by the callousness of the woman’s words. Years of experience appear to be allowing Graves to  maintain his composure, but again Newt can see the tension in the man’s jaw, and read all too clearly the dangerous look in his eyes. How no-one else is seeing it is beyond him.

“Your concern is noted, Madam, however in the interests of national security I will continue to carry out my function as Director along with all that entails.”

Newt can’t see the woman’s face from where he is standing, but he can still hear the steel in her voice. “Director Graves, this Congress has already held the vote. We require that you hand over responsibility for the recapture of Grindelwald to another within the organisation, for your own safety and the continued security of MACUSA operations. We cannot risk you being taken again.”

He sees Percival blink, the words taking a moment to sink in, sees the amused half-smile on his lips as he turns to take in Seraphina’s reaction, watches his expression freeze as he meets the President’s eyes and finds no humour reflected there. Newt feels himself wince, visibly, but no-one is watching him. All eyes are on Director Graves.

“The vote has already been held and the motion passed, Director,” Seraphina says into the ringing silence. “I will expect you to appoint an overseer for the investigation within the hour. This is for your own safety as well as the safety of this operation.”

Newt moves then, slowly and carefully, using the political drama unfolding at the front of the room as his cover. He can see the way the wind is blowing here, and feel the steel and ink jaws of a bureaucratic trap slowly starting to close around him. He can’t be trapped in the city, he needs to be free, there’s too much at stake to allow himself to be tied down here. And that’s a certainty, for Newt has been on the receiving end of Authority’s dictates enough times in the past to be able to read between the lines - taken off the case also means Graves is going to be kept where they can see him. It’s strange to find sympathy for the man stirring in him, and Newt wonders if he’s letting himself get soft.

He’s almost to the edge of the room when he glances to the right and finds one of the Phoenix Knights watching him. The room has filled with voices all arguing with one another for the right to proclaim that they’re only acting in the best interests of the populace, because vote or not, in favour or out, Percival Graves remains a dangerous man to cross. Through the shifting bodies of the gathered Congress Members the Knight watches him with that same mild disinterest so typical of her kind, as though the concerns of the dignitaries around them are of no bearing on anything a Knight might consider worthwhile. Her eyes are very green in the lamplight and her hair is the same gold colour that’s stitched into her robes, and for a second Newt is held fast in surprise. He has no quarrel with the Knights, and no expectation of having to tangle with them here and now either. Still, the attention of one of their number is not to be dismissed so easily. And then she blinks once in his direction, a subtle, cat-like acknowledgement, and looks away, and Newt cannot help but be relieved that nothing more was required to pass between them. Released from her attention he slinks his way through the rest of the crowd, muttering excuses and keeping his head low.  

Despite himself he does look back, just the once. Percival is grim-faced and in tight control of his temper, but Newt can see it right there below the surface, a steel grey and unrelenting fury. He’s countering the concerns of another dignitary, and again Newt feels a stab of worry. Can he afford to leave the man alone yet? Is it too soon? Can he risk doing anything else?

Percival hasn’t noticed his departure, but over his shoulder the President has. Her dark eyes alight on Newt and he tightens his mental defences in response. Still, he doesn’t need legilimency to understand the thrust of her thoughts at that moment. Grimly, he nods once to her and then silently slips away into the corridor.

 

 

*

 

She meets him halfway up the stairs to his tiny little rented room, his suitcase clutched tightly in his hand, travelling coat and scarf pulled up snug against the last lingering chill and such a look of determination on his face that she doesn’t even need her ability to know what he intends to do. As soon as he sees her, which is quite late owing to how focussed he is on his own inner turmoil, he draws up short, an almost comical expression of surprised horror widening his eyes.

“Queenie!” he stammers. “What- what are you doing here?”

So close to him and with such surprise has he reacted that it’s almost easy to read him. Even through the normal haze of his shielding she can feel the electric spark of his panic, and the dark pull of his fear, coiling in the space between them like a living thing. And then it’s gone, hidden behind whatever arcane control he uses to keep her out. Normally it’s one of his little creatures, perched on his shoulder half in and half out of this reality, throwing a fug of confusion around his thoughts like ripples across water distorting the clarity of what lies below. If it’s there today she can’t sense it, only feel the effects of whatever he’s done to keep her out, her mind sliding away from his, redirected without her even knowing how.

“I came to see you, honey,” she replies, smiling for him. It’s a smile intended to disarm, because even now Newt panics so easily when presented with an interaction he can’t predict. She can see from the twitch of his shoulders and the way he dips his chin to look away that she’s not going to succeed so easily.

“Well, I- that’s nice of you,” he says lamely, and then stops, leaving the two of them in awkward silence in the middle of the narrow staircase.

“Where are you going?” she asks him gently, biting her lip. If he spooks now then it’s likely that whatever he intends to do he’ll do alone, and there’ll be no chance to find out what it is, let alone if she can help him. “Are you leaving right now?”

Newt looks up at her in surprise, and she knows that he’s taken her words to mean only one thing, and in doing so confirmed every one of her suspicions. “Oh honey,” she says. “You’re just going to leave? Just like that?”

“No, actually-” he says, just the barest hint of annoyance in his tone, “I’m going out to get supplies. I, then I’m- look, Queenie, something bad has happened and I need to do something to sort it out.”

Queenie looks at him, and although she can hear nothing but the distorted mumble of his thoughts she knows from the way he won’t meet her eyes that the hurt on her face is having the intended effect. Not that she isn’t upset by his sudden decision, but, as with so many other things in his life, if it doesn’t involve a Void beast of some kind then Newt simply doesn’t think of the consequences. Often, he has to be introduced to them before they rise up and bite him harder than any demon could.

“I know, honey. I know what’s happened, that’s why I came over here.”

And she does know, because news like what Queenie’s heard in the last two hours burns brighter across the city’s collective thoughts than a Coston flare. _Gellert Grindelwald is loose._ She’d left at once to find her sister, and having been unable to locate her had instead headed over to Newt’s house on the recommendation of one of the junior aurors. And just in time too it would seem.

Newt is wincing, looking away again, his grip on his case’s handle tight enough it must be uncomfortable. Queenie can see the lines of tension in his shoulders, his body taut like heartstring in a wand’s core. Even if he’s not leaving right this instant he had been going to leave later without telling them, she can see that now. The idea of it raises something painful and unpleasant in her chest that squeezes tight and cuts off her breathing. He’s going to leave, and she’d guessed that even before she came here, but to have it confirmed, to have him try to sneak out again like he had the first time they’d all met. Why does nothing ever change? “After all we’ve been through,” she says to him, and this time the hurt in her voice is nothing but true.

He looks at her, stricken, and she shakes her head with one quick movement. Whining never gets anyone anywhere. Drawing in a breath she straightens her back to look up at him and smooths the hurt from her face. “Well! I figured you were gonna do something like this, so here I am. What can I do to help, honey?”

“Queenie, I- this isn’t, I mean.”

“Newt, honey,” she says softly. “Please let me?”

He draws in a breath of his own, the indecision on his features quite plain. For all that they’ve helped one another in the past, Newt is at heart a loner. She’s never quite sure how much of it is to do with his nature and how much his profession. What she does know, mental shielding or not, is that Newt has spent the past three months in a haze of indecision and anxiety, poorly hidden beneath the day to day busiwork of his profession. He may have spent months sewing New York’s Void defences back together, but there’s always been something hidden beneath his veneer of concentration that she’s felt giving away his underlying distraction. Tina hasn’t noticed it, but then Tina has had enough of her own work to do.

“If you know what’s happened,” he says slowly, “Then you know that something has to be done about it.”

Queenie tilts her head at him, her expression full of disbelief. Newt, infamous for keeping out of politics, for staying neutral, for not getting involved? Newt, who cares only for the politics of the Void and the creatures that spill from it? Oh, how he underestimates her, over and over again. “This ain’t about Grindelwald,” she says flatly.

Newt frowns, “Gellert Grindelwald is a threat to society-”

“Newt,” she cuts him off, voice quiet but firm. “I may not be able to read your mind, but I’m not stupid, honey. You don’t care about Grindelwald. You care about Credence.”

Newt holds his breath, and she knows that she’s right. It’s something she’s suspected for some time now. Something in the things he hasn’t said, the way he studiously avoids talking about his pursuits outside of his work for MACUSA, his silence whenever Tina mentions that strange young man. Where Tina mourns for him, Newt’s expression has always been carefully neutral, some thought he won’t speak stirring beneath the mildness of his gaze.

“He’s alive, isn’t he?” she breathes, and watches the flicker of emotion in his eyes. For a second his mental defense slips, and she gets a distorted ripple of thought, like a distant echo. _~they’ll kill him. No-one can know, not even Percival._ He looks up and meets her eyes, then grimaces, knowing that he’s allowed his defences to weaken. He closes them in sharply and immediately those brief, pale impressions are gone.

“Queenie, you mustn’t…”

But he can’t read her mind either and so he doesn’t know how fiercely her loyalty is ingrained. How much she understands having a secret to guard. “Honey, that bastard is after him too. If you find him, you’ll find Credence. And you’ll save him, I believe that.”

He looks at her, still unsure, but caught nonetheless by the certainty in her voice. He wants to believe what she says is true, she can see that much. Such doubt in him there is, despite all the things he can do! After a moment he breaks eye contact and looks down at the case gripped tight in his hand.

“Thank you, Queenie,” he says quietly in that polite English accent of his.

His mind is still hidden from her by the fug of his Void occultism, but she doesn’t need that to see that he really does mean it. Queenie smiles and reaches out to take his arm.

“Come on then!” she announces brightly. “Let’s go shopping!”

And so saying leads him down the stairs and out into the bustle of the afternoon city.

  


*

  


They talk as they walk, their footsteps ringing echos up into the high vaulted corridors of the diplomatic wing, their voices clipped and low until they reach the restricted areas where no member of Congress can follow. Sunlight slanting down from on high gives way to the gloom and shadows of the rat runs and back routes of MACUSA’s headquarters, and the buzz and skitter of familiars and messenger cantrips flicker and skitter past on all sides.

“I hope you’re going to give me some explanation for this bullshit.”

Graves’ voice is flat and pitched so that only she will hear him. Just as she does he stares straight ahead as they walk, their brisk pace forcing any others in the corridor to press themselves back against the walls to allow them to pass.

“Not here, Percival.”

“Oh, not here? And yet you chose to spring that on me in the middle of an emergency meeting, in front of every damned person in the house _?_ The fucking diplomatic attache for the Pitcairns knew before I did!”

“For Merlin’s sake.” Seraphina doesn’t look at him, but the disgust in her voice is clear. But if she is angry at him, then his anger is just as intense, made more so by what he chooses in his anger to call confusion.

“I’m not going to let this lie Seraphina, not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”

“There is nothing going on. You need to calm down and get your head out of your ass, Percival. You are-”

“You think I’m angry, Seraphina? You think-”

“You are _overreacting_ . This isn’t Ilvermorny any more, Percival. This isn’t elections for House President, this is _national security.”_

He stops, but she doesn’t, and the two Phoenix Knights trailing silently along in their wake slow to a halt, their emotionless gazes coming to rest on him. He glances to them and the mild disinterest in their eyes only infuriates him further.

“Percival!”

Seraphina snaps his name back over her shoulder, and gritting his teeth he follows. She turns right suddenly, opening a door in the wall that hadn’t been there before, and the four of them step back out into the bright light of the showcase corridors. Ten paces and they’re at the entrance to the President’s private office, a junior auror already stepping forward to open the doors for them.

“If you could,” the President says with a polite nod of her head, and the two Phoenix Knights take up position on either side of the door. Even amidst his anger Percival feels his eyebrows rise.

“Really?” he asks her.

“Get inside,” she replies.

The President’s private office sits at the very top of MACUSA building. Bright and filled with sunlight from the windows filling every wall, it is a topmost tower room for a building that has no tower, an eyrie from which the head of MACUSA might watch over the city. In truth, Percival has always rather liked the President’s private office, with its perfect silence that falls the moment the doors to the outer reception room are closed. It’s a haven of peace in an otherwise hectic organisation, with its polished wood floors and the choice selection of rugs and furniture that Seraphina has used to stamp her own personal mark on the room. Today though he’s not thinking of that.

“They serve you now, do they?”

Seraphina has crossed to the furthest wall and is looking out over the city as the afternoon starts to fade towards evening. The emergency meeting had gone on for four long hours of scrapping and argument, back and forth over what to do next, amidst an endless cycle of accusations and blame. “They’re on loan from the Order,” she replies. “It’s an act of good will, a show of solidarity.”

“Is it now?”

“For Morgana’s sake, don’t be a child, Percival!”

“A child- how dare you? You go behind my back with those fools from Congress, you withhold information from me, have me relegated off the most important case to hit this country in decades! Morgana’s tits you might as well have me sent down to wand permits!”

“You have not been relegated,” Seraphina replies softly.

“Oh, no? So who’s going to take over the operation, Sera? Jonas? Campbell? Hani? And why not, he’s been clamouring for the Directorship for ten years, I suppose he’s got to have his chance some time.”

She turns from the window and crosses to the great ebony and gold desk, leaning her palms on its surface. “I need you here.”

Percival laughs and shakes his head. “You need me dealing with this in person, because Grindelwald is the kind of bastard we can’t make mistakes with, god dammit Sera, I know this first hand!”

Her eyes are cool, her gaze calculating as she waits him out, and for Percival it’s unbearable to be treated like a recalcitrant child, as though all his years, his experience, his worth as a wizard are as nothing in the face of Congress’ decision. And part of him understands only too well why they’re doing this. Merlin’s teeth, he’d probably have made the same decision himself. But this cannot be happening to him, not like this. “Seraphina, this is personal,” he pleads, and hates the whining note he can hear in his voice.

“And that is exactly why you can’t go,” she replies.

“This is-”

“Just stop!” Seraphina’s voice is sharp enough to cut him short, making the delicate magical ornaments that stand on the little decorative tables vibrate in sympathy to the snap of her words. “Just...stop, Percival.”

He stares at her, and for the first time today really sees the tiredness in the set of her shoulders, the hollowed skin of her face that makes her look far older than her years. In the last year alone she has aged beneath the weight of her responsibilities in a way he has never before seen on her. Seraphina holds up a hand, one finger extended and he holds his tongue, nodding once in acknowledgement of the disrespect his outburst has shown for her authority. At the end of the day, despite all they are to one another, she is still his President.

“Let me tell you why you are not going,” she says quietly. In the distance, the first hints of a magnificent sunset are just beginning to turn the underside of the clouds to orange, picking out in pinks and reds the palette of the sky. Framed by its beauty she has the presence of command he has so clearly allowed to let slip. He nods, and she continues. “You know why the decision has been made, but let me make it clear. You’re compromised, Percival. You’ve been held prisoner by Grindelwald, and everyone knows that. I would be a damned fool to let you go chasing off after him, alone or not, because if he catches you again- I said _if_ \- don’t you dare interrupt me! _If_ he catches you, the fallout will be devastating. He’s already done it once, and it doesn’t matter if he did it by slipping you a draught of Living Death or by beating you down with curses, he _had you._ You are the face of this country’s security, the wizard that every member of the community looks to for protection in these dark times, and frankly Percival, it’s a damned miracle you’re still in office right now.”

Percival draws in a breath, taken aback, despite himself, by her words. He feels a cold chill go through him, and could not answer even had he the words to do so. Seraphina nods slowly as she gauges his reaction, and then continues. “Right now Grindelwald is stronger than we are. Why do you think there’s two Phoenix standing outside my door? You think I asked for them to play nursemaid? You think I want them in our country? They’re here because if we don’t let them in they have a reason to wonder why not.”

And everyone knows what the Order does if it feels it has cause to. Seraphina doesn’t need to say the words, Percival knows that well enough. The ancient order with their secrets and their powerful bloodlines, and their blind adherence to the tenets of their doctrine that has no patience for borders or the authority of mere governments. The stories of their exploits are often over exaggerated in his experience, but their lack of respect for native laws are not.

Percival rakes his fingers through his hair and slowly takes a seat in front of her desk. His head is aching and his thoughts keep circling endlessly back to the insult of being relieved of his duties. There’s so damned much to do, so much to make safe. He’s already set a number of people to their tasks, but he still needs to assign someone to oversee the operation. He cannot perceive of not being the one to do this.

“Why was I not told of his proximity?” he asks, and knows even as he speaks the words what the reason was. Seraphina tilts her head at him reproachfully, and he holds up a hand to wave her away. “For Merlin’s sake, I should have been informed.”

“What would you have done?”

“I would have made damned sure he couldn’t get away is what I would have done!” The slam of his palm against solid ebony sends a greater shockwave up his arm than it does the great wooden desk and he curls his fingers into a fist to draw off the pain.

Seraphina does not dignify his outburst with a response. Every precaution would have been taken, he knows that, just as she does. Slowly, she sits down across from him, lowering herself into her chair with the movements of a woman made slow by exhaustion. He looks at her, at the lines around her eyes and the set of her shoulders. There’s a fear in her that he’s never seen before, not even when they’d announced the assassination of the Archduke all those years ago, when the cogs of all the darkest prophecies had clicked solidly into place.

“I can’t just sit by, Sera, and let him go free. I have to _do_ something. This is not, god damn it, this is not some petty revenge quest! I need to stop him, I need to act. I can’t just sit here and tune my wand while my aurors are out there putting themselves in his way - he’s no joke, Seraphina. He’s too much for them.”

“He was too much for you, old friend.”

Percival snorts in disgust. “Oh for Morgana’s sake, I told you he tricked me. I was a damned fool, but I won’t make the same mistake again.”

But Seraphina is shaking her head. She leans back in her chair, her fingers still laced together at the edge of the desk. “I cannot be seen to permit this.”

“You have the power to override them,” he insists. “Congress would have to obey a Presidential order-”

“If I do that,” she interrupts him, “Then they will have me out of office by the end of the week. What’s better for the country right now, Percival? There are wolves at my door and Grindelwald’s supporters are everywhere. Do you want to add to that instability by triggering another election?”

Percival returns her stony look with the attitude of a man who knows that he is cornered, his options exhausted. Seraphina looks back at him and beyond the exhaustion he sees in her, the fear that everything is spiralling out of their control, there’s a steel in her too - the willpower that took her up the ranks like a meteor and had her installed as President long before her age or experience would have predicted. This is a monarch who stands tall while her city burns around her.

“I trust you, Percival,” she says. “I always have. And I don’t blame you for wanting to do this. We all deserve our vengeance for what he did. For what he’s going to keep on doing. You more than any of us perhaps. Someone has to stop him before he and those damned Phoenixes burn this world down trying to kill each other.”

In the quiet of her office there’s only the gentle chiming of the tiny, crystalline trees to break the silence, their delicate glass branches threaded with a magic that glitters and hums, gifts from diplomats of far-off lands. Percival can feel the weight of his own exhaustion beginning to settle across his shoulders and instil itself into his muscles with a deep, persistent ache. For a moment he sees the absurdity of his situation, a man nearly broken begging to go out and take on the one who so thoroughly, undeniably defeated him. It’s insanity, surely. Wounded pride at the very least. And yet he can think of nothing else he wants more, nothing he would not do for a chance to try again. He thinks perhaps he should feel more afraid.

Seraphina unlinks her fingers and places them flat on the desk top. There’s a folder beneath her hands, left open to an inked likeness of a man and a warden’s report. He’d been too indignant previously to notice it but now his eyes catch on the black lines of that familiar gaunt face and he sees it for what it is.

“I believe you have a right to feel as you do,” Seraphina says calmly. “But I cannot be seen to allow you to leave.”

She leans back in her chair, and lets her hands fall into her lap. For a long moment she stares at him in silence, the glory of the blossoming sunset blazing behind her across the city, and he stares back. Then he drops his gaze back to the document on the desk. Everything a man might want - times, dates, locations and last known directions. It’s written there in black and white, as clear as the choice she’s offering him. The chance to do what he must.

Slowly, Percival rises to his feet, feeling the weight of expectation lift from his shoulders. Or perhaps it’s only the weight of the chains he’s allowed others to place on him for such a long time. It’s like casting off a skin, like transformation or perhaps something a little like death. He wonders, very briefly, if this is what madness feels like. Seraphina watches him as he reaches out and passes his fingertips over the documents, shifting them so that he can see the maps below.

“We would have gone together, once, no questions asked, you and I,” he says quietly.

There’s no trace of a smile on her lips as she nods, merely the cool, watchful eyes of a woman with no other options. “Once,” she replies. “But those days are gone. And what’s coming is going to change everything.”

Percival straightens. He holds her gaze for a moment, and to say thank you seems too graceless a response. Too much a temptation of fate, too much the turkey thanking the farmer for the grain. Instead he says nothing, and turning, takes his leave.

  


*

 

The knock at the door comes some time close to nine in the evening. Newt glances across the bed at Cissy, and the Kneazle looks back at him, blinking slowly. He casts his gaze around the room, looking for anything Queenie might have left behind - gloves, a scarf - and, finding nothing, frowns and waits to see if the person outside will simply go away. Unfortunately, they don’t. Quickly lifting the Kneazle back down into his case, Newt flips the lid closed and then, with a glance around at the rest of the magical paraphernalia laid out on the bed, winces and goes to answer the door.

“Mr Graves!” he exclaims, surprise and anxiety returning him to formality. Even if he hadn’t been holding the door open barely a crack, he knows the pitch of his voice has rendered him immediately suspicious.

“Newton,” the visible sliver of Percival Graves’ face says. “Might I come in?”

Newt glances back over his shoulder at the devices laid out on the bed and wonders how many of them Graves will recognise if he lets him in. Probably enough of them. Definitely more than he wants him to.

“Uhm,” Newt replies, then has to back up as Graves puts his fingertips to the panelling of the door and pushes it further open. _You have an auror’s suspicious nature and the arrogance to boot_ , Newt thinks to himself irritably, but steps back rather than making a fool of himself by trying to keep the man outside.

Percival steps into the room and stops short, looking around at the culmination of a day’s worth of work. Newt fidgets uneasily beside him, looking again at the evidence of his labours through the eyes of the Director. His tracking instruments lie disassembled on the bed, cleaned and ready to be packed away again. His freshly laundered shirts are folded neatly ready to be stowed and the two sacks of extra food that he’d not quite gotten round to putting below still sit out in the open at the foot of the bed. At least he’d completely cleaned up the remnants of the tracking ritual from the centre of the floor, although he realises with a wince that he’s not yet put the rug back in place.

“Where are you going, Mr Scamander?”

The Director’s voice is pitched low and sounds friendly enough, but regardless Newt feels a thrill of fear go through him. He had not been intending to inform MACUSA of his plans to leave, and certainly not the Director himself. Would it get him into trouble to leave without doing so? Most certainly, but then Newton Scamander is no stranger to trouble. And now, caught unawares and in the very act of making his escape from the city, Newt finds himself rendered speechless, not knowing exactly what to do to extricate himself from the situation.

“You understand that you have a contract with us, Newton,” Percival observes mildly, his gaze wandering over the iron blade and silver dish of the Inquiro device. “I believe you need to provide seven days notice in writing before you leave the city.”

Newt is silent, his mind racing. He is quite certain that his plans of departure have been thoroughly scuppered by the Director’s arrival, and now any future actions he may take are going to be made even harder by the man’s quite warranted suspicion of him. Strangely he finds himself feeling almost guilty for the deceit. It’s not in Newt’s nature to revel in manipulation or lies, but the idea that he has betrayed the Director’s trust does not sit well with him. Uncomfortable, he looks down at the dusty wooden floorboards.

Very quietly, Percival Graves pushes the door closed behind himself, the click of the latch loud in the otherwise silent room. He takes in a long, slow breath, and says, “You know, they say he had a vision, and that it was this vision that started him down the path he currently walks.”

Newt blinks, then raises his head in confusion, looking up at Graves from beneath the tumble of his fringe. The Director is staring at the sack of canned foods at the foot of the bed, but from the distance in his eyes Newt suspects that he’s not actually seeing them. He’s talking about Grindelwald, Newt knows that without doubt.

“I always find that rather...irritating, when people say that about him. If I can use irritating here. I mean irritating seems like such a small word to use in relation to him.” Percival pauses, as though deep in thought, and Newt shifts uncomfortably. “It doesn’t sit well with me when people try to provide a reason behind the way he is, as though it somehow excuses what he’s become. As though he couldn’t have stepped back from the brink, as though his only logical course of action upon learning of grave danger to the world was to immediately lose every ounce of his humanity and become no better than the beasts he summons. It seems fantastical to me. Completely illogical! Because one has to _choose_ to become what he is. One has to make the conscious decision not to care. After all, there’s always a choice in the end, isn’t there? Otherwise, what is free will at all?”

Newt has been listening to all this in silence. Something in Graves’ tone of voice tells him that the questions are rhetorical, that the man is not actively seeking for him to answer. Or perhaps Newt simply doesn’t have the courage to address him on the matter, for he’s no stranger to the debates that surround the morality of summoners. He almost jumps out of his skin when Graves turns sharply to look at him, eyes narrowed and dark brows drawn fiercely down in his focus.

“Why do you do what you do, Mr Scamander? They tell me you could be a very powerful summoner, the most powerful in fact. And yet instead you go from place to place, cleaning up the messes of other people.”

It’s not that Newt’s never been asked the question before, more that to be asked by insensitive strangers or posed the question via a newspaper column is far different to being asked in person by MACUSA’s Director of Magical Security, and without any time for preparation at that. Of course, he’s had his stock answer for a long time and he deploys it now. “I..have, uhm, I have a knack for it. It’s in my bloodline, Mr Graves.”

The look that Percival gives him in return is disappointed, and for some reason Newt feels a flare of irritation rise up in his breast. Director or not, who is Percival Graves to question him so closely and then not take him at his word? Hasn’t he proven his skills and his own lack of insanity well enough by now? “Does it really matter, Mr Graves?” Newt snaps irritably, unable to quite maintain his politeness.

“Where are you going?” Graves asks in response, voice tight and low.

Newt balks, taken off guard, having expected some kind of answer rather than further interrogation. Flustered, he says, “I’m just tidying-”

“You’re not.”

Newt draws in his breath and then holds it for a second. He can feel himself losing his grip on the situation, can imagine this whole thing spiralling out of control, of being escorted back to MACUSA’s cells where the aurors can keep an eye on him and deny him the chance to get out of the city. He cannot be trapped here, he _cannot_ let Grindelwald get to Credence before he does. Merlin alone knows what that bastard will do to the boy.

“I’m going after him.”

For a long moment there is silence. Newt can feel his face growing hot under the auror’s attention, and it’s a fight to hold the man’s eyes. He can’t tell what the other man wants, or even predict how he’s going to respond, but he can guess. Aurors respond in only one way when their rules and regulations are broken in front of their noses: arrest first, ask questions later. There’s no time for that now, no time to be dragged off to the cells for another round of tedious, predictable interrogations and perhaps, although it’s never once worked before, perhaps this time if he offers up honesty first he might be able to buy himself some time to work out how to extricate himself.

“I can’t go,” Graves says. “I’ve been forbidden from pursuing Grindelwald myself. Seraphina has confirmed it.”

Newt frowns, confused. That is not the response he’d been expecting. He shakes his head, thrown out of his train of thought, and tries to get a grip on the auror’s break-neck change of tack. Newt had heard Congress’ decision to remove Graves from the operation of course, but he’d simply assumed Graves would have spent the rest of the afternoon arguing them around - that’s what men like him do. They play the politicians at their own games, say all the things that make everyone feel listened to, then get their own way in the end regardless of what’s been said. That Graves has apparently failed in that makes no sense. That _Seraphina Picquery_ herself was behind it makes even less sense. If not for her then- Newt cuts the thought off with an ease born of long exposure to thought-stealing void beasts, and tilts his head at Graves, fumbling for the right words to make the man give up his secrets. “She said that…? Seraphina, I mean, President Picquery said-”

“Yes.”

It just doesn’t make sense. Newt shifts awkwardly, unsure what he’s supposed to say. Graves has moved his attention away from him and is examining the stack of neatly folded shirts on the end of the bed. For the first time Newt realises that the man is tense, almost vibrating with the coiled potential of a Wampus cat ready to pounce. But not on him, he thinks. Not...quite.

“But you...you do want to go,” Newt breathes, barely daring to raise his voice in case he gets bitten for it. In case he’s wrong.

The Director’s silence tells him all he needs to know. Of course Graves wants to go. Of _course_ he wants to pursue the man that tried to kill him. That so thoroughly got the better of him. And if he wants to go, then...   

“I suppose,” Newt says with a frown. He looks around at his half-packed kit, thoughts tumbling one over another in their haste to formulate a plan. Graves isn’t here to complain to him that he’s been grounded, he can’t be. He’s here because he - this dangerous, powerful man - expects, _somehow,_ that Newt can do something about it.

“I suppose I _am_ breaking contract,” Newt continues cautiously. “By leaving, I mean. Without, ah, without telling you first. I suppose someone ought to come after me. And I’m, as they say, also a very dangerous summoner. That kind of pursuit should probably be handled by a high level auror.”

Percival’s gaze snaps around to meet his, and Newt feels a thrill of excitement go through him at what he sees there. Percival Graves is indeed a very dangerous man.

“Were you to leave, I suppose I would be forced to pursue you.”

There’s something almost amused in the man’s eyes, and for the first time since they’ve met a hint of the type of mischief only a wizard the likes of Percival Graves could be capable of, were he ever to slip the leash of his profession. Newt swallows, both taken aback and fascinated by the sight.

“Well, I’m actually almost finished here,” he says, glancing around at what’s left to pack. “I suppose you’ll need to gather your own things-”

“I’m already packed.”

Newt coughs, then clears his throat. “You, you are? Oh. Right then. Well. Uhm, give me five minutes?”

“Five minutes then.”

While Graves goes to the window and looks down into the street, Newt gathers up what’s left of his kit and begins to transfer it down into his case. For all that the Director had interrupted him mid-packing there hadn’t been very much left to do at all. As he wraps the tracking device up in its cloths and puts it carefully back into its box he wonders quite what he’s getting himself in to. To have Percival Graves along for the ride will be both restrictive and also quite possibly useful. Graves is a powerful wizard, there’s no denying that, and his backup in a fight against Grindelwald could prove to be priceless, but still. There remain things untested about his recovery, things Newt hasn’t told him, not yet. Maybe not ever. But if they do face Grindelwald those secrets will be the first to out. Newt closes his eyes briefly and wets his lips. No use in worrying. It will all sort itself out in the end, one way or another. There are worse things, surely.

One of which must the fact that he’s an auror, an _American_ auror, with all that comes with that, and to be shackled to one of their kind could ultimately prove more restrictive that it’s worth. For one thing Theseus can never know about this lest he starts getting _ideas_ about Newt working with the Authorities, which would be simply intolerable. And yet, as he glances sideways to the man watching the road, Newt can’t shake the flush of excitement that goes through him. It’s been over two months now since they’ve been working together and in that time he’s come to think of the man as almost, insofar as it’s possible for men of their professions, a friend. To have betrayed his trust by disappearing off into the night without a word would, how was it that Percival had put it? Ah yes, it would not have “sat well with him”.

“Do you know where he is?” Graves asks suddenly.

Manoeuvring the sacks of tins into the opening of his case, Newt levitates them carefully downwards, hissing at Cissy still idling at the foot of the ladder, to get her to move out of the way. “Uhm, well. Somewhat, sortof. I mean, I’ve done a quick tracking spell and I have a very general direction.”

“Do you?” Graves turns, surprise evident in his voice.

“Yes, well,” Newt says, realising that he may have tipped his hand a little too far with that answer. “I mean, he’s quite a blot on the psychic landscape for ah, another summoner. I mean, I can’t tell you the house number he’s in, but I can tell you he’s north rather than south?”

Graves relaxes minutely and Newt sees with some relief that he’s thrown him off the scent - for now at least. To tell Graves exactly how he’s tracking Grindelwald would put far too many people at risk, and what’s more might raise some rather awkward questions pertaining to just how well he knows Grindelwald in the first place. “I mean, what about you? Do you have any ah, clues?”

Graves shrugs and the movement is positively noncommital. Newt raises his eyebrows in astonishment at such a blatant display of evasion. “I...have a direction,” Graves replies.

“Really?” Newt asks, and then when Graves gives him a sharp frown holds up his hands. “I don’t mean to pry. Auror...specialist information...I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Right. Okay, well. Uhm, that’s me packed. I suppose I’m ready to go then.”

For a second they simply stare at one another, both of them standing on the brink of something that perhaps neither of them are quite ready for. Newt for a confrontation for which he’s not sure he’ll ever be prepared enough, and Graves, well, all he can do is assume that Percival Graves must feel somewhat the same way.

“It’s all right,” Newt says softly. “The demons will tell me where he is, and once we get there, well, one step at a time.”

The smile that pulls at the corner of Graves’ mouth is uncertain, but something about it gives Newt a strange sense of confidence. If nothing else comes of all this then at least the two of them appear to have reached an understanding of some sort. He’s not sure exactly what sort of understanding quite yet, but he finds himself surprisingly hopeful.

“After you, Mr Scamander,” Graves says, extending a polite hand towards the exit.

Newt nods and heads for the door with Percival Graves following close on his heels.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell you what, I didn’t know that flares were invented by a woman. Martha Coston, look her up! The things you find out while researching throwaway similes!
> 
> Annnd they're off. You know I love cosy tearooms and taking these two on the road. It was _inevitable_.


	7. The Menagerie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the road and down in the case, Percival is uneasy and Newt is worried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It got long. Part 1 of 2.

Percival draws in a sharp breath and grimaces, then suddenly leans forward putting his head down between his knees to gag. Standing beside him Newt winces apologetically and holds out a mug of water.

“Sorry, that one’s got a lot more golden root in it, it’s probably quite bitter.”

After a moment Percival straightens up and reaches for the mug, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Tastes like piss and engine oil,” he grouses, drinking deep of the water.

“Oh, none of that, I assure you,” Newt replies, tossing the now empty potion bottle into a basket for later. “I can’t see how either would be of any help.”

“Perhaps they’d improve the taste some,” Percival mutters, and at Newt’s amused glance frowns. “How long will it take to work?”

“A few hours,” Newt replies. “By this evening you’ll likely notice a difference in your energy levels. But ah, don’t push it too hard. I mean, it’s not a miracle cure-all, just a little bit of help.”

Percival drains the mug of its contents then pushes himself to his feet. “Honestly, Newt, your potions have done more for my recovery than a month in the hospital. And I’m only barely exaggerating at that.”

Newt feels himself flush and, taking the empty mug from the other man’s hands, turns quickly away to hide the colour in his cheeks. He suspects that despite his words Percival is indeed exaggerating, but the flattery nonetheless finds its mark and he rides the swell of warmth with something somewhere between pleasure and embarrassment at his own malleability. When he turns back Percival is still watching him, his head tilted fractionally, a considering look on his face and Newt blinks, wondering what he’s waiting on.

“Ah, well. I did say you need to watch how much you do for now. I mean, yes, yes,” he holds up a placating hand. “I know you must be able to work, and to cast as necessary, and I am well aware that you are a, ah, frighteningly proficient combat wizard, but even so, you still need be mindful of your recovery.”

There’s a small, amused smile pulling at the corners of Graves’ lips and Newt stumbles to a mental halt, shaking his head at his own incoherence. He’s sounding dangerously close to a mother hen, clucking around like this. “You know I’ve told you all this before of course. You know- you do know, I’m sorry.”

“Newt,” Percival says, then pauses. He flicks his gaze away and around the dreary interior of their cheap hotel room. “Look, you said earlier you needed something bringing back from the stores?”

Newt blinks twice before his mind manages to catch up. Of course, he had made preparations for just this moment. “Right, yes. Bicarbonate of soda. As much as you can get, please.”

Percival raises his eyebrows. “Baking...soda?”

“Yes,” Newt nods.

“That well-known component of Void rituals…?”

“Yes, actually. Have you never laid down a base of, ah, baking soda as you call it, and then added a concentrate of mixwater and silver nitrate to the lamb’s blood, and, I’m sorry.” Newt breaks off, beginning to laugh at the other man’s expression, and Percival levels a confused stare at him. “I’m just joking, it’s to clean my instruments, that’s all. I uhm, ran out a few days ago - used the last up before I’d even thought to spell up more.”

Percival closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, shaking his head. “Newt, I-”

“Hmm?”

“Never mind. _Bicarbonate of soda_ , for the Englishman to clean his instruments. I’ll see what I can find.”

Newt watches in bemused silence as Percival shrugs his ever-present greatcoat to sit more comfortably across his shoulders, and then with a nod heads out into town. Once his footsteps have faded from the landing outside Newt moves over to the window, waiting for the auror to emerge onto the street. He tracks his progress as the other wizard crosses the empty road and then cuts down a side alley in the direction of Main Street. Leaning against the window frame Newt forces himself to wait a full five minutes, just to be sure the auror won’t be returning, before he turns back to the face the grubby room.

‘Low profile’ Percival had said, and Newt, hardly one to care for lodgings beyond their capacity to perhaps provide a nice breakfast in the morning, had shrugged and agreed. Still, it had amused him to see the efforts to which Percival Graves had gone to keep the displeasure from his face when the damp patches in the corner of the ceiling and the dust on the surface of the dresser had become apparent. Clearly MACUSA’s Director is accustomed to somewhat more upmarket lodgings whenever he takes to the field. 

Smiling to himself in amusement, Newt kneels down and begins to pack away the remnants of his scrying equipment, putting the delicate crystal and silver mechanisms carefully back into their case. The ritual had returned nothing but the same fuzziness it had reported in New York, and in all honestly he is hardly surprised. Gellert Grindelwald may blacken the fabric of reality with the intensity of his power, but he has plenty of demonic familiars willing enough to mask his presence wherever he goes.

Setting the equipment safely to one side, ready to go back down into his case, he sits back on his heels, and then with one last glance towards the door, slips on his gloves and whispers the name of his familiar. It takes a moment or two before the shadows beneath the wardrobe thicken, and then in a darting of ink and oil the creature is across the dusty floorboards, up his arm and into his palm. It sits back in a flickering of dark smoke and velvet-soft skin, its large black eyes staring upwards into his own. Newt reaches into his pocket and picks out a silver sickle, holding it up before the little demon’s nose. Its black eyes fixate on the coin, but it doesn’t reach for the treasure, not yet.

 _“Credence,”_ Newt whispers to it, eyebrows raised. It chitters softly, and when he tosses the coin for it to catch it leaps upwards in a twist of smoke and spirits it away with deft and sinuous finesse. Newt watches the creature flicker a path across the room, through the gap beneath the door and away on its hunt, and hopes with only a small amount of paranoia that it doesn’t somehow manage to cross the path of Percival Graves.

Newt stares down at the toes of his shoes, his thoughts far away, elbows resting on his knees. It’s... _interesting_ to have a travel companion. In almost all circumstances Newt prefers to travel alone, though of course he’s done his time with both the Order and the occasional auror, depending on how fragile the Ministry feels its control is getting at any particular point in time. Newt is more than familiar with being made an example of, and long experience has taught him the fastest way to get rid of unwanted Governmental oversight is to simply let them get it out of their system. 

Still, Percival Graves is something else entirely. It’s almost like having one of the Phoenix Knights along with him, but somehow less comfortable. For all that the Knights may set their magic squarely against the Void they at least stand firmly within the intricacies of its politics, and as such there’s a certain level of understanding that exists between Summoner and Knight. There’s a security in it, a sense of purpose, and of course the general public love the romanticism of a good Knight-Summoner pair, off to battle the unholy. That’s never really been Newt’s thing though, that whole destiny, fate, ‘righteous calling’ game, and he doubts it would be the Director’s either. Percival Graves, for all his uptight auror nature, is a charming and charismatic man, but he’s also world-weary and down to earth, and as such his company has been refreshingly, well, _normal._ He may lack the traditionally aloof and distant nature of the Knights, with their strict emotional control and endless meditations, but despite his natural inclination towards suspicion he is at least proving himself to be surprisingly open-minded.

Newt huffs a soft laugh and shakes his head. If someone had told him last year he’d still be in America four months after he’d first arrived, doing this here, now, with _this man_? My god he’d have burned his passport then and there.

In a sudden movement Newt pushes himself to his feet, shaking himself free of where his thoughts are going and looks around for distraction. Tea, yes. He’ll go down and make some tea. He’s cast his net and now all he must do is wait and see what comes back. Until then, well, worrying about it all just gives something else power over him, and every demon summoner knows that’s something to be avoided at all costs. 

Brushing off his knees, Newt makes his way back down into his case and sets the kettle to boil.

 

*

 

For all that Newt Scamander is meticulous and full of caution when it comes to his Void magic, he is, apparently, as bad at the details of everything else as a squib is at charms.Tucking the small tin of newly acquired baking soda into his coat pocket, Percival casts his gaze both ways before stepping out into the street and losing himself in the midday crowd. 

The town in which they’re staying is small, and although it lacks the hectic pace of New York there’s people enough on the sidewalks that he can blend in using only a minor charm to turn aside no-maj eyes. The residents of this small town are typical of the no-maj population, and as far as Percival is aware the place is entirely devoid of magical folk. It’s been a help in the sense that there have been no mystical eyes watching for them, or lingering long enough to recognise them even innocently, but nonetheless Percival had deemed it best that Newt lie low while he be the one to venture out. That way if there are any wandering aurors in the vicinity then Percival is best placed to deal with them.

It’s been three days since they left New York. The first urgent communique from MACUSA had come on the second night: a rather sheepish message from one of his own aurors to advise that Captain Hani is being most _insistent_ regarding Graves’ current whereabouts. It had been with no small amount of satisfaction that Percival had sent a message back advising that with Jonas now in charge of the apprehension of Grindelwald all inquiries should be directed his way. They’re suspicious, he’s well aware of that, but as yet none of them have the audacity or political clout to come after him. 

Despite what he’d told Newt on that last night in New York, Percival hasn’t registered the man as missing, merely ‘at work in the field’ - a description that can cover a range of activities. It will give them both some time to work with, and if Newt thinks the conditions of their travel are more clandestine than they currently are, well, Percival hasn’t forgotten that he’d found the summoner already halfway out the door when he’d turned up at his apartment in search of him. Still, regardless of what he may have told the office, the fact remains that very soon someone is not going to stand for any more distractions. 

Percival cuts down another side-street, taking his time to watch the locals. He’s not entirely sure what he’s looking for, but thirty years an auror have taught him to wait and see what outs itself. There’s still a risk that one of Hani’s aurors will be out nosing around on their commander’s behalf, or even that they’ll get picked up in Jonas’ sweeps for Grindelwald, and that’s something Graves would like to avoid at all costs. The less members of MACUSA they talk to the less likely it is Seraphina will be forced to notice him gone. 

Hiding from his own kind is exerting a strain on Percival that even now he finds unnerving. It’s been three months since his return, two since he left the hospital and yet even now, after all the best treatment, he’s weak. Shielding them both from sight is draining him enough to cause a frisson of alarm in his veins, no matter that the spells he’s using are the sort of heavy-duty masking they’ll need to keep away the eyes of other aurors. That they’re having to do so in the first place, despite his complicity in all this, simply makes Percival’s unease all the worse. He’s feeling wired and something treacherously close to anxious, full of not quite nerves that he’s gone and done a quite foolish thing. The thought has set a constant hum of unease crackling in his veins, although he’s doing his damnedest not to let it show to Newt. The man must be able to respect him and rely on his steady guidance after all.

When Percival gets back to the grimy hotel Newt is down in his case. With a grim press of his lips together he stands in the middle of the room and eyes the suitcase lying innocently next to the dresser, as though the damned thing might at any second fly up and tear at him with suddenly sprouted teeth, like one of those cursed biting books he’s heard tell the mad professors at Hogwarts still put on their curriculum. The British, quite mad the lot of them. 

With a grimace he realises that he’s dragging out the inevitable. He is an auror of thirty years, not some trainee fresh out of Ilvermorny, and to dither like this is unforgivable in a man of his standing. And yet - he eyes the summoner’s case with trepidation, unease creeping through his body, locking up his shoulders and making the hairs on the back of his arm rise up. He remembers the ice cold of that dimly lit corridor, the stretch of it off into some unfathomable distance, lost to darkness. The iron of the walls and the hum of the wards, and that sterile, unpleasant scent of bleach. Deliberately he forces his fingers to uncurl and his shoulders to lower. Newt Scamander is down there, and summoner or not, if that man can settle with ease in the depths of such a place then so can Percival.

There’s a tiny silver bell attached to the handle of the case by a delicate chain, innocent enough to be a traveller’s good luck charm or a child’s gift to a favoured adult. Percival reaches out and lifts the charm far enough that he can give it a shake. It rings with the tone of a much larger bell, one distant and somewhere far below. Immediately the leather in the corner of Newt’s case creaks and a sun-damaged fold in its surface cracks open to reveal an eye which rolls around to examine him with beady intensity. Percival endures the examination in silence, and a moment later the eye closes and the lid of the case unlocks with a snap.

Taking a breath, Percival reaches out and lifts the lid.

Newt is sitting at his desk when Percival finally emerges into the summoner’s cramped laboratory. He’s hunched over and scribbling furiously by the combined light of three oil lamps and several strategically placed candles, but he breaks off for a moment to stretch out one long leg to hook the circling Kneazle out from where Percival’s feet must land.

“Cissy! Come on, get out of the way. Sorry, she’s terrible. She wants to go up and see what’s out there but the moment she gets up top she just wants to come straight back down. Come _here.”_

“Kneazles, yes,” Percival agrees distractedly, glancing around. The room is as cramped and cluttered as he remembers it, lined on both sides with shelves filled with books and oddments, the uses for which are not immediately apparent. Newt’s untidy cot stands along one wall, the blankets tossed back and covered with black Kneazle fur, a scatter of parchments laid out beside the pillow. The great ward-bound and sigilled iron door stands cold and silent at one end of the small room, and without realising it Percival feels his eyes drawn to its heavy presence. He finds himself narrowing his eyes at the thing, as though in challenge, which is absurd for it’s nothing but a door. Still though, the knowledge of what lies beyond is a chill touch that raises the hairs on the back of his neck.

“It’s locked, don’t worry.”

Percival turns and finds Newt watching him. The man’s expression is mild, and there’s no accusation in his eyes, but still he feels a rush of embarrassment. He’s in another man’s home and acting with the manners of a goat, as if any second some unbound demon will come crawling out from beneath the bed to snap at his ankles. And in truth even knowing what lies beyond that door, now he’s down here such fantasies seem preposterous. The door stands locked and bound with the heavy finality of blessed iron and wards alike, and the room, windowless as it is, basks in the warm glow of lanternlight, made comfortable by the fragrance of the dried herbs hanging from the ceiling rack. It is hardly the lair of a dark sorcerer. 

Flustered, Percival casts around for something to say. “Of course.” His eyes alight on the notebook that Newt was working in and he indicates it with a nod of his chin. “Did I disturb you?”

Newt shakes his head and sets aside his quill, closing up his inkpot. “No, just making some notes on local conditions. Ley alignments and regional VISP harmonics, all quite dull really.”

Percival catches a glimpse of neatly written notes and sketches that seem in line with what he knows of Void notation. He wonders at the insights a man like Newton Scamander must have, with his unassuming nature and his knack for disrupting the plans of dark wizards and rogue summoners alike. The things a man who keeps an enchanted case full of monsters that live under the bed must have to share. 

“You should write a book,” he says suddenly, and although he’s only saying it in jest, the look Newt gives him could strip paint from a wall. 

“Absolutely not,” Newt says in horror. “That sort of information in the wrong hands would be disastrous, Percival! I couldn’t possibly allow it. And besides, it’s quite illegal.”

For just a second Percival gapes at him. Of course he knows all of that is true, that the illegality of such a book would be extreme, the choice to write it more than exceptionally unwise. Naturally he had only been joking, but now he feels like a complete fool. He shakes his head, quite taken aback. “I was, ah, it was meant as a jest, Newt. Of course I couldn’t seriously condone such a thing-”

“No, no of course not,” Newt says, and then he looks away, hurriedly breaking eye contact and making Percival wince. It would seem they are off to a marvellous start this afternoon. Casting around for something to ease the sudden awkwardness, Percival remembers the tin of baking soda in his pocket and reaches into the depths of his coat to draw it out.

“I got the uh, bicarbonate for you.”

Relieved by the distraction Newt takes the proffered tin, turning it to read the label before unscrewing the lid and dipping his finger inside to taste the contents. Percival watches in silence, still not entirely convinced by his need for the stuff but glad of the change of topic. 

“Yes, thank you, that will do nicely.”  
Percival nods and glances down at the Kneazle, who has taken to mewling at their feet. “I encountered nothing worth reporting in town,” he says. “The area’s quiet, not a sign of his passing anywhere.”

Newt shakes his head sharply. “He’s been this way.”

Percival raises his eyebrows at the certainty in the other man’s voice, and Newt dips his chin and gives one of his strange half-shrugs half-bows. “I can just tell, I can, there’s- it’s a, a hunch.”

“A hunch?”

“Mm,” Newt replies, and turns away. Percival can’t see his face but he can read the tension in the summoner’s shoulders. He seems entirely certain of his assertation, and in all honesty Percival finds himself quite willing to take the man at his word. Percival may be an auror, trained to track, but Newt knows other summoners better than anyone.

“Well,” he replies. “If that’s the case then we ought to head out tonight. We can take a few hours to sleep this afternoon, then leave after midnight. I hope you don’t mind that, we’ll need lesser wardings if we fly out with the night to conceal us, and ah, potion or not, it would be wise to conserve our energies.” 

 _My energies_ , Percival amends silently. 

Newt looks him up and down once, very quickly, and then seems to realise he’s done it openly and looks abruptly away. “Ah, no matter,” he replies. “We summoners are familiar with the dark.”

There’s a beat of silence in which they both consider this truly awful attempt at levity, and when Newt looks at him with an apologetic wince and something akin to a smile, Percival snorts, aghast at such an ill-conceived joke. It’s not even funny, and yet still he finds his lips twisting into a poorly contained smirk, more an expression of shared horror that either of them might ever be heard saying something like that in public than it is a any sort of amusement. Still, Newt laughs too, quiet and with a hiss of breath through his teeth, shaking his head up at the gathered bunches of herbs hanging above them. 

“Uhm, thank you for this,” he says after a moment, lifting the tin of baking soda. “I’ll make a note to remind myself before I run out next time.”

“You’re welcome,” Percival replies, then moves his foot as the Kneazle butts his calf. “And perhaps feed this one while you’re about it.”

“Mm, yes, I am due to do the rounds, and she does get fed en route.” Newt slips the tin into his pocket and then douses the candles with a flick of his wand, leaving only the lamps burning. “You can take the cot if you’d like to get some sleep, or ah-” he looks at the great silent door to their right. “You could always come with me, if you’d like…?”

Percival feels a chill of something go through him and is hard pressed for a moment to say if it’s fear or simple battle-readiness. This is how he feels standing in the dark waiting for a raid to commence, the thrill of energy in his muscles ready to be called on, the buzz of his blood through his veins and the beating of his heart in his throat, all tempered by long years of discipline. At least, that’s what he tells himself. In all honesty he’s not sure if the skipping of his heartbeat should be assigned more accurately to a certain sense of dread. 

Newt is watching him carefully, and Percival has the distinct feeling that in this moment he is being judged. Well, he will not be found wanting. He’s not the sort of wizard to back down from a threat, and he doesn’t t intend to start now. The iron door stands silent, and he refuses to give in to the need to glance in its direction. “Why not?” he agrees, certain that he’s achieved an at least believable tone of unconcern for what lies beyond that heavily guarded portal.

Newt’s answering smile is not the bright beacon of happiness that Percival might have hoped for, but he seems to have passed whatever test the other had set for him, for Newt folds closed his notepads, dusts off his hands on his trousers and raises his wand. 

“All right, shall we then?”

 

*

 

The auror is a steel-tense shadow of dark coat and black mood at his back, and Newt suppresses the urge to sigh. For all Percival’s brave face and studied calm in the face of adversity, he cannot hide the frown that pinches his features or the way he follows close enough on Newt’s heels to be almost clipping the back of his shoes. Normally Newt would never invite another person down into his case, and to do so for a second time is highly unusual for him. But the whole situation with New York and with Grindelwald is completely out of the ordinary, to say nothing of Percival himself, and as far as he can see it simply cannot be helped. Besides which Newt is concerned - for Percival to still be suffering from spell drain after so many months doesn’t sit right with his expectations. Something is amiss and the only way Newt will be able to accurately diagnose just what is by exposing the man to the types of diagnostic testing he can only achieve down here in his own unique manner. It’s certainly not the sort of thing he can go around explaining to the tame summoners of MACUSA.

“We’ll feed the Migen first,” he says, one eye on the uneasy auror, the other on the Kneazle lurking at his feet, waiting for an opportunity to trip him up. Percival makes a sound that could broadly be interpreted as acquiescence, and Newt thinks _all right then, easy does it._ For all his exposure to Void magic over the last few weeks, Percival remains healthily wary of it, and honestly Newt would rather that than for him to slip into blasé disregard for his own safety.

By the time they’re done with the Migen Percival seems somewhat more settled, and Newt has a better handle on how he’s reacting. The auror had stayed well back within the safety of the enclosure’s airlock as Newt had worked, not setting a single foot out into the habitat. Still, he’d passed out extra rats when the bucket had run out, even if he’d floated them rather than using his hands. Reassuringly he’d seemed far less nervous this time, but Newt’s not sure if that can be put down to simply knowing what to expect from the Migen. Still, it’s interesting. Percival displays none of the intrinsic revulsion for their kind that the average person experiences, and that in itself is something worth noting. Unfortunately, without an in-depth and difficult to explain look at the man’s aura it’s difficult to be completely sure what this might signify.

“Right,” Newt says, dusting off his hands and pushing the Kneazle back out into the main passage. “Let’s get this sealed up and move on.”

With Percival a silent shadow at his back, Newt leads the way deeper inside his case, following the gloomy passage and passing several other warded iron doors until he comes to one that lacks the complex array of monitoring dials. “All right, here we are.”

“What’s in here?” Percival asks warily, and Newt can see him bracing for some terrible answer.

“Ah, the mighty _buxum repono!”_ Newt replies with a grin, one which falters at Percival’s concerned expression. “It’s uhm, just a- just a storage room. Come in.”

“Right,” Percival replies, peering warily past him as Newt shoulders the door open and leads the way inside.

The room beyond is a large square chamber that looks as though it wouldn’t be out of place in some ancient castle clinging to a mountainside. Great stone blocks make up the walls, and stacked everywhere are crates and boxes, sacks and the occasional iron-cornered chest. Six heavily laden tables fill the room, and what little free space there is along the walls is lined with shelves which themselves are packed to a disordered brim with bottles and books and all manner of supplies. 

Set into the far wall a large fireplace burns with surprising cheer, an old-fashioned spit and cooking pot standing nearby ready for use. Newt sees Percival raise his eyebrows at this, and feels a sudden surge of defensiveness. His set-up may be dated and basic, but it works well enough for him. Then, embarrassed by his own pride, he quickly ushers the man inside and closes the door firmly behind them both.

“I’ll just, uhm-” Newt pulls out the bicarbonate of soda and holds it up to draw Percival’s attention before stowing it safely on a shelf, careful to put it nowhere near the rest of his already well-stocked supply. No need for the auror to pick up on that little white lie. When he turns back Percival is looking around at all of his stored paraphernalia, a working life’s collection of tools and supplies necessary to maintain a high security environment like this. The sight of the auror wandering slowly along a row of shelves, casting his eyes across their contents, provokes a habitual flicker of nervousness in Newt. It is so incredibly unusual for him to have company down here like this, and he realises with some surprise that he can’t help the twinge of house-proud concern that his private space might be judged and found wanting. 

In the flicker of firelight Newt watches the auror lean in to peer inside a glass jar of beetle shells, drawn by the blue-black gleam of their wingcases. He seems curious and far more at home than Newt might expect him to be, but then the man has such an air of casual self-confidence about him that he’s not entirely sure he’d know if he _were_ ill at ease. It occurs to Newt not only how strange it is that he’s invited the man into his inner sanctum, but how potentially dangerous too, and all extenuating circumstances aside, how little he really minds. As odd as it is to have someone else in here, it’s not entirely unpleasant. Percival has proven himself to be both intelligent and surprisingly tolerant all things considered, _and,_ Newt reminds himself sternly, it’s not as though he’s down here to condemn. 

Newt watches the other man skirt around the edge of a book-laden table, turning his head slightly to read their spines as he does so. He’s handsome, Newt thinks suddenly. Handsome in a kind of dark, expressive way, and it’s not that he’s never noticed it before, more that he’s never really felt at leave to look. But here, now, in the safety of his own territory he feels a confidence that the outer world so rarely allows. Yes, very handsome really, he thinks, and then all of a sudden feels like a fool and looks away. He definitely needs not to be allowing himself thoughts such as _those._

When he looks back a moment later it’s to find Percival staring at him, and for a shocking moment Newt fears the man may have caught the tail-end of his thoughts. Percival draws in a breath and then pauses, the fingertips of one hand tapping just lightly on the cover of one of the stacked books. He seems to be hesitating, and Newt can feel the thrum of embarrassment ringing in his ears as he stumbles for a way to defuse the situation.

“What else is down here?” Percival asks carefully, and all at once Newt realises that the auror’s stare is less aimed at Newt and more a product of a man working himself up to saying something. He hadn’t been reading Newt’s thoughts after all, the summoner realises with no little relief - he’d been far too lost in his own.

“Well,” he replies, still fumbling for mental balance, but Percival cuts him off with a shake of his head.

“I mean, I understand Grindelwald came down here?”

It must hurt him to ask the question, Newt realises. Speaking of the dark wizard provokes an anger and anxiety in Graves with which Newt quite sympathises. To speak of the damage he did in both Percival’s name and absence has not yet, nor will it likely ever, lose its sting. 

“Don’t worry,” Newt replies grimly. “He didn’t get far. In fact, I believe he almost burnt his hand off on one of the wards.” And then, with almost uncharacteristic savageness, he adds, “More’s the pity it didn’t burn the rest of him up too.”

“Damned right,” Percival mutters, with possibly more heat than he appears to have intended, and for a moment the two of them share a look of understanding. It seems that for the both of them Grindelwald provokes an uncharacteristic strength of negative reaction.

The moment of connection appears to ease something in Percival, and Newt wonders what it was that he’d feared to hear. There’s still so much he’s not sure of about this man, not only in the sense of his magic, but of his personality too - all those facets of himself that he keeps hidden away behind the solid walls of respectability and professionalism. It’s a puzzle really, and Newt likes puzzles.

And yet this situation is hardly one in which he should be seeking to become too embroiled. The sooner he’s able to wean Percival Graves off his assistance the better. Still, he can hardly abandon an innocent man to the lingering effects of a magic that Newt himself is responsible for. What he needs is to fully understand the limits of those effects, and perhaps this will be the perfect opportunity to test them.

“Right, well. I need to get on and do some checks,” he says, knowing full well that Percival will be curious enough to ask exactly what checks. Let the man himself take those first steps under his own power, far better if Newt not be seen to be driving him onwards. 

Predictably, Percival’s expression registers his immediate interest. You can take the auror out of his city, but he’s always going to be an auror. Newt almost smiles. 

“Feeding?” Percival asks.

For a second Newt can only blink at the question. Then he frowns, taken aback. “Oh no, _absolutely not._ You don’t _feed_ demons, Percival. Not unless you’re wanting them to do something for you. Merlin, no! You can’t give them anything for free, or else they’ll take complete advantage of you.”

Percival seems confused, “Then- I was told-” he says slowly, before wavering under the intensity of Newt’s gaze. Clearly realising that he stands on the brink of what the summoning world must view as an unforgivable and dangerously unknowable error, he falls silent instead.

Newt is intrigued by the man’s reluctance. Surely he cannot fear Newt’s opinion. “Told what?”

But Percival shakes his head wordlessly, looking deeply uncomfortable, and suddenly Newt feels a spike of suspicion. Of course, he knows what this is about. “What have you been told, Mr Graves?” he asks mildly. “That I abduct babies in the night and feed them to my creatures?”

Percival looks surprised. “No, actually. More that you don’t have to do those things. That the demons you summon do your bidding because they want to.”

Newt draws in a breath, feeling himself go cold. Years of ingrained caution and careful application of the truth have kept him largely safe from the public’s condemnation, but these last four months in America have brought him dangerously close to their attention, and only luck and Seraphina Picquery’s quick manipulation of the media have brought public opinion down firmly in his favour. To hear Percival of all people come out with such a statement is honestly terrifying. Of course it’s not so much that it’s inaccurate, as it is very dangerous talk. In Newt’s experience, if people think you’re too close to demons then might start thinking you _are_ one.

“Is it true?” Pericval doesn’t look afraid of him, he merely looks curious. In the flickering firelight he stands with his head tilted to one side, fingertips still resting on the stack of books - calm, and perhaps dangerously unassuming, but nonetheless Newt finds himself undone by the frank interest in the other man’s eyes. It’s not often someone asks such a question without even a hint of horror in their tone. He turns away, back towards the fire, wondering if he should make tea or put another log on, and then realises that he’s stalling. For Merlin’s sake, after all they’ve done together, all that’s happened, he should be able to trust the man! And suddenly, shockingly, he realises that he _wants_ Percival to be the one to trust him, _really_ trust him, as one might trust a friend. 

_Merlin’s teeth._

Deliberately, because people dislike a lack of eye contact, Newt makes himself turn round again, enough that he can look into Graves’ eyes as he replies. 

“What you must understand, Percival, is that demons only give you what they want to, or what they are compelled to. They aren’t like us, they don’t think like humans or beasts, they think like the extraplanar entities that they are, alien and foreign to all our understandings of reality.” He pauses, gauging the effect of his words on the other man, but Percival seems content to listen in silence, and so Newt pushes on. “Ultimately, control of demons is all about sacrifice. That’s all it ever comes down to, at the end of the day. You want something, you have to pay for it.”

The logs in the grate snap and settle, and Newt rests his weight on the back of a wooden chair tucked beneath one table. He can feel the carved beading along its uppermost edge pressing into his palms as he grips the wood tight. It’s imperative that Percival understand what he’s trying to say to him, and not get it twisted and misunderstood as it so often is, by outsiders and practitioners alike. What he tells him now is a truth so often misapplied that it’s both dangerous to know and dangerous _not_ to know. “The trick is not in making the greatest sacrifice to them, it’s in knowing what it is they really want.”

“And you do, do you?” Graves asks softly.

Newt hesitates, a humourless smile plucking at the corner of his mouth. How to explain what he knows of a demon’s wants and needs, of the magic he can read like the pages of a book, of the feelings of such vast and alien entities and the distance between all that they are and all that humanity is. To admit to the way he can read the world, to the understandings of reality that he has, that is still far too dangerous a thing, no matter how charming this man may be, no matter how _handsome._  

“I...have an understanding of what they need, yes, Mr Graves. And because of that, I am well placed to prevent them from obtaining it to the detriment of all. But, that aside, demons, despite being on the whole not given to intelligence as we might know it, are certainly cunning. And they will go where they think it most likely they’ll be able to achieve their goals. After all, like the living creatures of this reality, who have certain needs - food, water, warmth, mates - so too do demons have wants and requirements, although we might not be able to understand them.”

“You’re saying they’re simple beasts?” Graves asks, brow lowering, and although Newt knows that he’s being drawn on the subject he finds that he wants to carry on, to make this man really see what he himself understands. 

“Not at all, Mr Graves. I’m saying they’re differently intelligent to us.” At Graves’ frown Newt gives him a small smile and shrugs one shoulder. “Humans of all kinds have a tendency to assume intellectual superiority by dint of being able to make sense of what they’re seeing. When what they see makes no sense within a human context, or rather when they have no capacity to interpret what is it they’re seeing, they simply assume stupidity on another’s part, rather than a lack of true understanding on their own.”

Graves doesn’t reply, and for a moment Newt wonders if he’s inadvertently offended the man. He hadn’t _intended_ his words to be a jab at Graves’ own lack of a thorough grasp on the intricacies of human/demon interactions, but he’s well aware that he often comes across as insulting to other people, even if he doesn’t mean to. Frustrated, he wonders how to fix the misunderstanding, but can only think of trying to explain again what he meant, and long experience has taught him that never goes across well. 

Percival, for his part, has turned away, and is now slowly making his way across the room, rounding the corner of the table, a thoughtful expression on his face as his eyes wander over the mess of boxes and books. “Why sacrifice?” he asks suddenly.

Newt peers at him cautiously. He doesn’t seem to be angry or even offended, merely interested, so perhaps Newt had been hasty in his judgement. The question is valid and has been asked many times by scholars and summoners alike over the years, and every time the answer remains the same. He shrugs and sighs quietly. “Because that’s the way it works with them. They get something, you get something. The rules of reciprocity are very strict, and for that we should all be grateful, for without it, demonkind, indeed the Void itself, would long ago have taken all of humanity for its own.”

Percival is quiet, and Newt wishes he knew what the other man could be thinking. There’s always a threat, even with the most relaxed of people, and certainly with wizards of a certain type, that they’ll suddenly lose their nerve when presented with the harsh reality of Void magic and become hostile to any further understanding of what it is that Newt does. In fact, he’s learned well over the years not to volunteer too much information, not least because in the wrong hands it can be completely misused. 

Newt stares unhappily into the fire, still angry at his own inability to maintain a connection with someone, even if it be solely for the length of a single conversation. He’s not entirely sure why it is he feels such a need to explain to Percival the truths behind his work, or even why he craves the man’s friendship so much, but there’s a curious need in him for the other man to grasp the truth of what he does, even if he cannot quite offer the whys, not yet. _Not ever_ , Newt thinks, surprised at himself. There’s no easy way to go there that won’t lead inexorably towards something far darker, and he must be so very careful with this man not to deceive, while still withholding the things that will never help him to know.

Newt is still frowning when Percival turns suddenly to him and says, “This is all very bleak talk, isn’t it?”  

There’s a twist of a smile on his lips, and the sight of it draws an inadvertent one from Newt in return. Newt looks away, annoyed again at himself for his own inability to keep a firm handle on his responses. It’s terrible for a summoner to allow his emotions to lead him astray, and yet here Newt is, ricocheting from one reaction to another, guided only by the mood of another person. _Get a grip, Scamander,_ he tells himself firmly. And then he remembers himself and the purpose for which he’d brought Graves down here in the first place.

“Shop talk,” he says, with a glance up at Percival’s face. “Sorry.”

Graves waves the apology away with one hand and a shake of his head. “A trap we all fall into.”

Newt smiles and hopes that it doesn’t look too much like a grimace. “You know,” he says slowly, wondering how exactly to go about this. “When I said that you don’t have to feed demons, I wasn’t being entirely accurate.”

“Oh?” Percival is once more wearing that expression of sharpened interest common to all aurors when they catch wind of something that interests them, and the transformation is so obvious and predictable that Newt almost laughs. On any other auror it would have been a sign to keep his mouth firmly closed, but on Percival it feels as though it has more to do with a genuine interest rather than any sense of condemnation, and for the life of him Newt cannot understand why. Still, he’s really come to appreciate the honesty of the Director’s fascination with his field of expertise, and for the first time in years, not since he was very young and very foolish, Newt feels himself warming to the idea of speaking openly about his private work to someone not directly involved in the field. 

“Well, you remember I mentioned that demons have wyrds? Ah, rules they have to abide by in order to remain manifest here?” At Percival’s nod he continues. “All right, well, that goes both ways. In order to keep certain ones of them manifested you do have to do the equivalent of feeding them sometimes. I mean, it’s not really feeding them, it’s ah, well, it’s a bit more complex than that and there’s a bit of extraplanar arithmancy involved and uhm, well, never mind. And it’s not all of them, just some.”

Percival nods, and then snaps his fingers quickly, making Newt jump. “And you need to feed one of them. You said before you needed to do the rounds?”

“Yes,” Newt says, wondering what connections are really being made in that clever auror mind. Still, he thinks to himself, this will be a perfect opportunity to test your limits, Director.

“May I...watch?”

Even uncertain of the full extent of Graves’ anxieties, Newt can tell that the request takes a degree of courage to speak aloud.  _Hm,_ he thinks. _Curiosity killed the cat, Mr Graves._ But out loud he only says, “If you wish.”

He’s not quite sure how to read Percival’s answering expression, but if pressed he might say that it falls somewhere between stout resolution and heavily concealed panic. Taking pity on the man, Newt turns away, giving him a moment or two to come to terms with what he’s volunteered himself for. “But first I need to feed the Kneazle before she starts clawing up the sacking again, come here you, yes, you! Cissy! Come on, girl.”

While he digs out tinned fish and a clean bowl, Newt keeps half an eye on Percival. The auror has taken to walking slowly along the aisles between tables, his shoulders stiff and rigid, the fingertips of his right hand rubbing together as though he misses the heft of his wand, and feels perhaps some need to have it within easy grasp. That nervousness will not be useful, Newt thinks, and will only serve as a chink in the man’s mental armour, should anything as unlikely as a breach happen - not that Newt expects such a thing, and nor does he intend to allow one to occur. Setting down the Kneazle’s feeding bowl, he begins to dig in a drawer before pulling out a small silver charm on a chain. 

“Here,” he says, lifting the trinket so that it catches the firelight. “Wear this around your neck.”

Percival threads his way back through the tables and lets the charm rest against his fingers for a moment before he accepts it. Newt can feel the press of the man’s magic against his own as he reaches out mentally to examine the trinket, a formless weight that feels like the heaviness that precedes a storm, and it makes Newt blink for a second. Percival will find no trace of magic in the charm, for that’s not the point of this whole exercise, but sometimes just the belief that something will protect is enough to focus a person’s own innate defences sufficiently to shield them. 

He sees Percival’s brows draw down into a frown of confusion, and Newt gives him what he hopes is a guileless smile. “It’ll help you resist their auras if any reverb gets through the warding. It can, ah, get a little heavy in some of the pens. They will, uhm, well, it might feel like they’re trying to lean on you - even though they can’t! Because of the wards, you see. But anyway, the way they interact with reality can lead to some rather unpleasant, although entirely harmless, ah- transient effects.”

He’s not entirely sure that Percival, trained as he is in counterspells and warding theory is going to believe him, but he surprises Newt by nodding slowly. 

“Like at the river, when the whole place felt heavy.”

“Yes,” Newt says, with only a twinge of guilt. “Exactly like that.”

 _Except I really need to know just_ how _badly it’s going to affect you,_ he adds mentally. And the most accurate way to do that is to try it and find out.

They leave the Kneazle behind in the storage room, Newt shutting the door carefully to trap her inside while Percival slips the little charm around his neck, tucking it safely into a fold in his shirt. And then with one last look to his guest to confirm that he’s ready, Newt leads the way further down the corridor and into the endless stretch of passage. 

Graves stays close and in the sterile gloom of the corridor Newt can hear him breathing. It’s the carefully regulated breath of a man keeping himself under control, and for just a second Newt wonders if he should call this whole thing off. Bringing a person so intimately affected by Void magic down into his case, into such close contact with Void beasts - chained or not - cannot be wise, even if it will give him a more accurate read on the man’s magical health. But as he pauses to raise the issue and give his excuses, he finds Percival’s face a mask of determined calm. When the auror meets Newt’s gaze it’s with the all the confidence of a man in control of himself. Reassured, Newt leads him onwards.

He starts them small, skipping the rooms that can wait for later, the ones where the creatures are not suitable for anyone to view, let alone someone new to this world of demons and horrors. As they go, Newt checks door monitors, noting down gauge readings in his notebook, adjusting the dials on some and peering quickly through the grilles on others. All the time Percival stays close at his shoulder, less the crowding of a frightened man and more the careful shielding of a wary guardian. Newt wonders if he even realises that he’s doing it. What the other man expects to go wrong Newt cannot say, but he finds himself fascinated all over again by the presence of him. It’s not the hair-trigger lingering of a suspicious warder, but the watchful presence of a guardian. 

 _Like a Knight,_ he once more finds himself thinking. A Phoenix Knight of my own, without all the tedious restrictions that come with them. Which is of course both a novel and foolish idea all at once. Percival Graves is nothing like one of the Order, and never could be, and Newt, well Newt can never go back to that life.

He pauses before the dial display of chamber 217 for a moment, checks the readings, then tucks his notepad under his arm and brings out his wand to unlock the door. The mechanism releases with a clunk of metal and the portal swings open to reveal the little airlock beyond. Stepping inside, Newt beckons Percival to join him and is interested to note the calm with which he does so. He really does have remarkable self-control, Newt thinks. Then, securing the outer door firmly behind them both, Newt pulls back the cover for the grille on the inner door and peers inside.

 _Yes,_ he thinks to himself. _This will do nicely._  

“Here, take a look.” Beckoning to Percival, Newt shuffles to one side so that the other man can move closer. Percival blinks at him, then straightens his shoulders and takes a resolute step forward. Newt watches him carefully, ready should he exhibit any indication of distress, but for now there’s nothing but a tension in his shoulders and the taut expression of someone who doesn’t quite know what to expect but who suspects that it will require courage.

Newt waits patiently as Percival leans carefully towards the grille and peers inside the chamber. He watches as he looks around, tilting his head to peer into every corner, surprise then wary confusion chasing themselves across his features. 

The inside of the chamber beyond opens into a small cottage kitchen, cozy and inviting, with a crackling fire in the hearth and the scent of bread baking on an out of sight oven. There are fresh flowers in a vase on the windowsill, a pair of worn but comfy-looking armchairs in one corner, and a bright slant of sunlight through the window that illuminates the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, making the skins of the stacked apples gleam emerald and ruby red.  

“I don’t see the demon,” Percival frowns.

Newt can hear the wariness in his voice, and he bites back a grim smile. “But you can feel it?” he presses, because Percival is clenching and unclenching the fingers of his free hand, itching perhaps to bring out his wand to fight or defend himself.

“I can feel _something.”_ Graves peers around, searching the corners of the cottage room as best he can from this angle, ducking his head to try and see into the shadows beneath the table. “Where is it?”

“You’re looking at it,” Newt says softly.

“What, the-?” Percival looks from him back to the room and then back at Newt. “It’s…?”

“Yes,” Newt nods. “Louistheld’s Replicant, also known as a Greater Mimicbeast, Quinary Tier creature. It _is_ the house.”

“Unpleasant,” Percival mutters, clearly taken aback by the deceit. 

“Yes,” Newt agrees, shaking his head. “I found it in Dorset. It had eaten six people by the time I got there.”

He smiles wryly at Percival’s look of horror and then reaches across to close the grille. In the gloom of the single hanging lantern, the small room feels close and tight around them. Newt carefully lets his magical senses play along the edges of Percival’s aura, looking for the shift and twist of any kind of out of place influence, and finds nothing but the slow swirl of what he expects to see. Still though, the points of the other man’s energies are indistinct, the feel of his presence taut, the energies sluggish, and Newt thinks there’s yet something not quite right. 

“All right there?” he asks.

Percival nods, but there’s something uneasy about it, and when he glances sideways at the closed grille Newt tilts his head and waits. He thinks for a moment that Graves will question him, perhaps to ask why he still has such a monstrous predator living in his case, but then the moment passes and Percival straightens, his eyes clear and determined. “I’m fine,” he says.

Clearly, he is not, but it’s not the mindless horror that many exhibit in the face of the Void beasts, and that is enough to pique Newt’s interest. Neither did he seem particularly able to pick up on the beast’s deception, something that Newt had wondered about given Percival’s unexpected resistance to the river demon’s touch. Altogether, as far as Newt is concerned, the picture remains unclear. Still, impressed by the auror’s composure, he leads them back out into the passage and shuts the door firmly behind them.

They move on, past handleless doors laden with dials and inscribed with intricate symbols, some that are secured with gleaming wards and others that are reinforced with heavy iron bolts and thick chains that hum with power. Percival eyes these with increased caution, pausing before one particularly chain-festooned door to ask, “What in Morgana’s name are you trying to keep in there?”

Newt smiles, and then after a moment’s hesitation reaches up to flick the grille open, nodding for Graves to take a look. There’s no inner airlock on this chamber, just a simple stone room carved with protective symbols, and a single block of dark granite standing in the centre. Set point-down in the stone is a sword of some dull metal, ancient-looking and worn. 

“Is...that…?” Percival asks slowly, glancing at Newt in query.

“Probably not the one you’re thinking of,” Newt says grimly. He moves in alongside Graves to peer in at the sword, and snorts softly. “And not so much keeping it in, as keeping people out.”

Reaching up he snaps the grille closed, the sound echoing sharply along the corridor. When Newt turns Percival is looking into the distance, as if following the echo of the sound away into the darkness. Stepping into his line of sight, Newt smiles, hoping to break the man’s unease. “And if it ever speaks to you, don’t do what it asks, hm?”

He almost winces at Percival’s look of alarm. The comment _had_ been a joke, but the moment to explain that is probably already past, and instead Newt thinks it wiser to simply move them along. 

With a glance back over his shoulder Percival follows along in Newt’s wake, staying close enough to be in reach but not so close as to crowd him. Again Newt is struck by the feeling of being guarded, and then a sudden grim thought sends a chill the length of his body. Guarded why? Is the auror even aware that he’s doing it? Does he do it because it’s in his nature, or because it’s _now_ in his nature? He has a sudden flashback to three months ago, to the shit-stink reek of the ritual circle and the shadow-darkened corners of Graves’ townhouse, to the dread cold of that far-off prison and the debilitating, horrifying pull of the creature that had guarded it. If Newt had been a lesser man he might have faltered in his steps. His mouth is dry and he tastes something that might be blood on the back of his tongue, and he thinks to himself _what have I done?_ And then, with a flash of anger at his own indecision, _what was necessary._

By the time they reach the last room on Newt’s list, he’s no longer sure that he wants to do this. The magnitude of these long months of careful manoeuvring are weighing heavy on his mind, and although Newt is no stranger to the manipulation of the truth, there are some lines that should not be crossed. And yet, here he is, and there those lines lie, so far behind in the distance that were it not for the unforgiving blaze of their nature he’d barely be able to see them. He pauses outside the last door, looking carefully at the bank of dials bolted into its surface. There are no obvious wards here, but that’s only because there are few who know how to look. The demon beyond this door is a higher beast, a canny and intelligent creature, one of the few truly threatening things he keeps down here. Newt smiles grimly at the blank surface of the door. Yes, of all the monsters and miracles that live down here with him it’s this one that might tell him the most about what is happening with Percival Graves.

“Here,” Newt says, and reaches up to slide back the cover on the grate. “You can take a look inside.”

With a cautious glance at him, Percival steps slowly up to the grate. “No airlock?” he asks.

Newt simply shakes his head, and then nods for him to continue. He watches as Graves leans carefully inwards to peer inside the room, waiting to see what his reaction will be. What he sees here, what he feels here, may tell Newt more than any divination ever could. He trusts the vile old fiend enough for that. “What do you see?” he asks after a moment. 

But Percival shakes his head and looks back at him in confusion. “I see a steel room. Is it empty? Or is this like that damned house demon?”

Through the gap of the open grille, Newt can see the Voidbeast over Graves’ shoulder, standing in the centre of the chamber, tall and twisted, and whip-crack thin. Skin as pale as sour milk, stretched taut over bone and tendon, it stands as still and silent as white marble. It smiles a needle-toothed smile at him, and as Percival cocks his head in confusion, wondering where the trick is, Newt hears it whisper inside his head like the sound of cracking ice.

 _“What have you done, Newton Artemis Scamander?”_ it asks him, and then in a blur of movement faster than the eye can track, it hurls itself against the inside of the door hard enough to shake it in its frame. The corridor reverberates with the thunderous booming of the impact and the creature fills the air with its howling.

Percival almost jumps out of his skin. He stumbles backwards sharply, scrabbling for his wand in an undignified rush of fright, but Newt doesn’t move. He simply puts out an arm to catch the auror around the waist before he falls over his own feet, and draws him back against his shoulder to steady him. He can feel the other man’s heart pounding, his breath coming fast, and Newt reaches up with his free hand to grasp Percival’s wrist, gently but firmly pressing down and away the hand that holds his wand. He smiles dispassionately at the demon, and replies mentally, _“You be silent, like a good girl.”_

To Percival, he says, “No, it’s in there, as you can hear. It’s just playing tricks, trying to scare you. Don’t give it what it wants.”

Gently pressing Percival to one side Newt reaches up and snaps the grate closed. Immediately the pounding on the door stops and the howling cuts off, as though by closing that tiny sheet of metal he has shut and barred some door far more substantial. In the silence of the corridor Percival’s breathing is loud and ragged. He runs a hand suddenly through his hair, turning to look up and down the corridor, gathering his wits and shaking away the fright of the encounter. He has the look of a man who doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or run, and for a brief second Newt is fascinated to see beneath the Director’s cool composure.

Stepping away from him, wand still gripped tightly in his hand, Percival wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and then asks, “Is that it, the one you wanted to feed?”

Still watching him come down from his shock, Newt simply hums an affirmative. That hadn’t been quite as successful as he’d hoped, but it has at least confirmed one thing in his mind. Mentally he maps the the ties and dependencies that Percival’s reaction implies, or rather what his complete lack of resonance with that particular beast implies. Newt is so wrapped up in that particular thought that he quite misses the changing expression on Percival’s face. The Director is staring at him now in open suspicion, his clever mind already snapping pieces of the puzzle into place. 

“What the hell does it eat?” he exclaims, then his eyes narrow. “Wait, you bastard. Does it eat fear?”

Newt blinks at him, realising only belatedly that as each moment passes his companion is becoming less than impressed by this whole situation. “No, Percival, nothing like that. You think I brought you here to-? No, don’t be absurd. I wouldn’t do such a thing to you.”

“Then what?” Denied his righteous suspicion, Percival seems almost embarrassed. With Newt standing unconcerned and vaguely bewildered before him, his readiness for a fight seems suddenly ridiculous, and with a quick, irritated movement, he slides his wand back into its holster. 

If he was hoping for a detailed answer to his question, he’s to be disappointed. Newt smiles distantly, and tucks his notepad into his jacket pocket. “She just wants to see me.”

Newt can feel the unspoken question hanging in the air, but that is a secret that’s his alone to hold. Not even Percival Graves is entitled to the answer to that particular riddle, not now and most likely not ever. Here and now he has all that he thinks he can glean from the encounter, although perhaps later he’ll return and see if he’s feeling brave enough to gamble for more. Regardless, it would be best done without the curious ears and quick mind of MACUSA’s Director to read more into it than he wants. For now he has what he needs.

“Right then. I think we can afford to adjust those bangles of yours, just a smidge. I think they’re a little out of synch.” 

And so saying Newt turns on his heel and heads back towards his laboratory. He leaves Percival staring after him, hesitating in a cloud of confusion and hastily smothered outrage, his pride wounded and his carefully cultivated aura of collectedness quite rudely shattered. Newt cannot help the wry smile that pulls at his mouth - even the most powerful of archmages will waver when confronted so directly with the hungry darkness between the stars. After a moment he hears the clipped sound of the Director’s footsteps as he hurries to catch up rather than be left behind alone down here.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I look I my chapter outlines and I think “That’s not enough, something else has to happen” and I add in another couple of scenes. Or sometimes someone references something in a comment and I think “Oooooh yeah, I better put that in too” or sometimes both happen at once and tl;dr the planned 6k chapter is suddenly teetering far over the brink of 17k words and tl;dr #2 I’ve gone ahead and cut this chapter in two because it was just too damned long. On the other hand, the next chapter's already written, I just need to cast an eye over it before posting. Probably tomorrow, as it's getting late here.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the menagerie and the start of the real back and forth between the pair of them...! Thank you, as ever, for reading!


	8. The Exorcism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something out there, in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And part 2.

Percival wakes up cold to the bone and sweating, his heart thudding a painful rhythm in his throat. He struggles upright, fighting off the twisting embrace of the blankets and sits staring out into the darkness of the hotel bedroom. There’s a hum of something vibrating the air, like a pressure in his ears or a rumble of sound too deep to be heard, only felt in the ache of his teeth. For a long second he thinks he might be going to vomit, and as his eyes slowly adjust to the moonlight slipping in between the curtains he steadies his breathing, searching for composure. Slowly his stomach calms, but the feeling of dread does not recede.

Something is out there. Something is wrong.

He swings his legs out of bed, almost surprised to find that they support his full weight despite the trembling of his body, and pushes himself to his feet. For just a moment he wonders if this is something to do with the bracelets. Newt had adjusted them for him earlier on in the evening, just as he’d promised. Something about being out of synch, and although Percival’s fully versed in the attunement of magical items, he’s still a little unsure how these magicless foci work. Whatever the case, once Newt had done tinkering with them he hadn’t felt anything different putting them back on. Frowning, Percival turns them so that they catch the moonlight in a liquid gleam of silver. They lie dormant against his skin, warmed enough by his body heat that he can barely feel their presence. He flexes his fingers, feeling the hairs along his arms rise- no, this is nothing to do with them.

The alien sensation is something from outside himself, not something from within, and he takes a moment to assess it. He’s not sick in any way with which he’s familiar, and this does not feel like any attack that he’s experienced before. Not a curse or a hex, or even a charm. It feels like being pulled, like something out in the darkness beyond the town is making the fabric of the night resonate with its calling, like the half-heard whine of a mosquito. 

It feels like Void magic.

The ringing of the suitcase’s little bell charm is loud in the stillness of the room, and Percival’s grip is hard on its chain. The case’s gatekeeper eye snaps open, blinks beadily at him just the once before closing, and then the case unlocks with a click. Percival lifts the lid and peers downwards into the depths. He calls Newt’s name softly, urgently, and after a few seconds there’s a flicker of candlelight far below and the summoner appears at the very base of the ladder, peering blearily upwards at him. He looks dishevelled, as though he’s just roused himself from bed, albeit still fully clothed, but when he sees the look on Percival’s face he draws up short. 

“What is it?”

Percival glances to the side, at the empty bedroom, then back down into the case. “I can- can you feel that?” 

Unable to articulate quite what he’s experiencing, he stares down at Newt, willing the summoner to understand. If anyone will be able to work out what’s going on then Newt will be the one. He sees Newt look away, sees him vanish from sight and then hears the click of locks and the sound of the inner door below being opened. 

“Newt?” he calls down.

For a few seconds there’s silence, then the sound of the door being closed, and Newt appears once more at the foot of the ladder. He begins to ascend, his coat over his shoulder, wand between his teeth. Percival moves back to make room for him, then stands stiffly as Newt steps in close. He begins to trace his wand up and down Percival’s body, not touching the skin but close enough that he can almost feel the touch of it. All the while Newt is frowning and that strange buzzing fills the gaps in Percival’s attention, tugging on his magic like a child pulling at her parent’s hand. 

“What is it?” he asks, well aware that he shouldn’t interrupt a diagnosis in process, but unable to contain his concern. He keeps his voice hushed, as though raising it too much will draw the attention of whatever it is that’s happening. 

“It’s not set the Migen off,” Newt says by way of answer. “They’re all quiet.”

“Is that good?”

“Well, it means it’s either too small to notice, or they think it’s not a problem because it doesn’t eat  _ them. _ Excuse me, sorry.” He presses the palm of his hand flat against Percival’s chest, just above the breast bone, so that Percival can feel the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric of his sleeping shirt. Compared to the cold he feels biting inside his body, Newt burns like an open oven. “Or of course it could be too powerful for them to notice.”

“What?” Percival exclaims in alarm, visions of another breach flooding in.

“Right, it’s not you, you’re all right. Tell me what you’re feeling.” Newt withdraws his hand and the chill of the room replaces it. In the moonlight he has all the cool composure that Percival feels he currently lacks.  

“I can  _ hear _ something, feel it. Like a pulling almost.” He looks helplessly at Newt, lacking the vocabulary or experience to quite articulate the sensation.

“Like a weight you could slide towards?” Newt asks, gaze intent. “Like the sound it makes when someone runs their finger round a glass, but on and on?”

It’s oddly specific, but it’s absolutely correct and Percival nods, relieved. “Just like that.”

“Right, get dressed. We’re going out.”

The small town is still sleeping when they step out into the darkness. It’s somewhere close to two in the morning, and every good citizen is already long abed. Percival stands on the sidewalk, looking up and down the deserted street, turning his head to locate the source of what he’s hearing. Of course it’s almost unnecessary to do so, but some part of him rebels against what he’s feeling, refusing to take it at face value. Newt hangs back, and Percival can feel his eyes on him, watchful and curious and it’s both unnerving and strangely comforting to be the object of the summoner’s focus. If nothing else Percival has complete faith in the man to know what’s best right now.

He turns to look at Newt, hesitating because the pull of what he feels is nowhere near here. “We need to...” he trails off, shaking his head. It’s counterintuitive to leave town - everyone knows demons come to where there are the most people packed together. It’s easier for them that way.

“Go,” Newt replies. “I’ll follow.”

They move silently through the nighttime streets, Percival following the strange pull of that unknown sound, feeling the ache of it in his back teeth and behind his eyes, making him want to spit. Newt is a shadow at his back, close but never in his way, his wand in one hand, his case clutched tightly in the other. Percival wonders what that means and thinks suddenly that it might mean they’re not going to be coming back. He pushes the thought aside and follows what he hears on the night air, leading them further on into the darkness.

It takes him an hour to find the source of the pull, and in that time it never ceases, a constant whine at the back of his mind, making his bones hum with it. Percival leads them out of town, down the main route and then off along a dirt track that heads into the forest. The trees darken the skies above them, and even on such a clear, cold night they must walk with the tips of their wands illuminated to show the way. 

By the time they come upon the little house nestled in the heart of the woods, Percival is almost shivering with suppressed energy. The shadows around this place are deeper than they have any right to be, the woodstacks and the logging equipment scattered around the yard standing forbidding and tipped in razor-edged silver in the moonlight. For a long moment he just stands and looks in at the little house, crouched there in the dark, and there is nothing that could make him take even a single step closer. 

He turns to Newt, and finds the summoner’s features wear the serenity of a man who knows exactly what comes next. Struck suddenly by a deep and unyielding concern, Percival reaches a hand for his shoulder, and Newt smiles gently at him. “It’s all right,” he says. “I’ll take it from here, Percival.”

And in that second Percival wonders how far back Newt had realised where they were heading and what they would find. He had been so wrapped up in the pursuit, so on edge from the hum of the magic in the air that he hadn’t once looked back. He watches in silence as the summoner hefts his case in one hand, extinguishes his wand, and leads the way towards the front door. 

After a moment, Percival follows him.

  
  


*

  
  


The woman that answers Newt’s knock looks drawn and thin, darkness under her eyes and skin pale with the kind of exhaustion that comes with sickness or death. Newt smiles at her like one might smile at a lost child and says, “Ma’am, I was sent to help you.”

She blinks once, then leans forward so sharply Percival thinks she might fall. But she catches herself on the door-frame and says, “Are you a priest?” 

“Yes,” Newt replies, and Percival glances sideways at him before he can stop himself. “I’m here to help.”

Afterwards Percival will always struggle to describe what it felt like in the little woodcutter’s house that night. The small family huddled in the front room, grandfather and father, teenage son and child daughter. The mother leading them through the heavy shadows of her home to the back room where her own mother waits. The oppressive silence of it and the way the lamps struggle to push back the dark. The rooms are cold and there’s a draught that cuts through them, though every window is closed tight and the fireplace roars. No-maj items are everywhere - clothing and tools and those strange, dead photographs they keep, all lined up and staring out from the walls. The place is grey and washed out, as though something has wrung out all the colour from its surfaces.

The daughter walks as though in a daze, and when she shows them both into the back room Percival thinks it’s because she has no other options left. No questions, no doubt. Just no-majs far out of their depth, in a house that hums with the magic of the Void, lifting the hairs on the back of his neck and making his breath come short and sharp. And always that damned whine in the air, on and on.

Newt is a calm presence amidst it all, his movements unhurried, expression composed, and a hand resting just lightly at the woman’s elbow to help her along. Percival has never seen him touch anyone like that before, not of his own accord. It’s a different Newt from the one that flinches and retreats before the gaze of others and Percival finds himself drawn along in the wake of him, following inexorably towards the source of it all.

While the family hides itself away at the front of the house, there at the back, in a single boxy room, there’s an old woman. The family have tied their matriarch to her armchair with rope at the ankles and the wrists, and left her sitting in the middle of the little room. Newt stands in the doorway, the daughter to one side, and Percival looks over his shoulder. As soon as his eyes alight on the woman he thinks  _ that’s a possession.  _ It’s nothing in the way she sits, nothing in the way she looks, or even in the absolute stillness and silence of her body, and everything in the cold, animal intelligence in her eyes. Something not human, something lesser and at the same time more.

Newt stares at the woman for a very long time, simply observing without entering. He stares straight at her, his eyes slightly narrowed, head tilted fractionally to the side, listening perhaps to something only he understands. The daughter waits beside him, out of line of sight of her mother, her eyes on the summoner.

“Madam,” Newt says calmly, and Graves almost jumps at the sound. “I saw you have a barn outside. Is there room in there for all your family?”

“Well, yes,” she says, hesitantly, and Newt smiles, stepping back to quietly close the door to the small room. 

“I’m going to ask my companion here, this is Percival, to take everyone out to the barn and make sure they’re comfortable. It’s probably best everyone tries to get some sleep in a safe place while I work with your mother, and Percival will make sure the barn is blessed and safe, won’t you, Percival?” The look Newt gives him is significant, and Graves snaps out of his uneasy distraction to allow his years of experience with handling no-majs to take over. 

“Yes, ah-”  _ Shall I call you ‘father’?  _ he thinks wryly. “Of course.”

“Excellent. Now while Percival’s doing that, there’s just a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

Even without the assistance of a simple charm spell, the family are more compliant than they ought to be, but the heaviness in the air of the house, the strangling feel of the shadows in the corners and lurking beneath the furniture, it’s all so oppressive in a heavy, mind-numbing way. Percival cannot understand how they have withstood it for as long as they clearly have. Perhaps this sensory dullness is the one benefit of being a no-maj. 

While Newt uses the kitchen to speak to the mother, Percival herds the rest of the family outside to the barn, using only the lightest touch of magic to render them dazed. The barn is dark and cold, and with a frown he transfigures a discarded tarpaulin and some rags into a pile of blankets, handing them over to be laid out. The place is still little more than stacked wood and machinery, and a pair of unhappy-looking ponies huddled in the back stall - no real place to put a family. So he makes low beds from a stack of broken chairs, and then lanterns to brighten the place and ward off the child’s fears. Such a display of magic around no-majs is frowned upon, but Percival  _ is _ the law here right now, and what these daze-charmed people don’t sleep away will be lost to obliviation, he will make sure of that. Besides, he too can feel the maddening weight of the house and its occupant crouching outside in the dark. 

He sets the family to sleeping, a heavy charm that will last through even the greatest storm, and by the time Newt brings the mother out to join them he has the place warded and laid with so many protections even he might struggle to break them. As Newt ushers the mother inside and enchants her to sleep beside her family, Percival is struck for the first time in many years by the manner in which they manipulate no-majs in the field. It’s been a long time since cover-up and obliviation have been jobs which has had to take care of in person. For so long now there’s been a team to do that, people between him and the front line. He’d forgotten how easy it is to set the rules for those who cannot realistically resist. 

Even in the middle of all that’s going on here the thought is enough to give him pause. But then here, now, with that terrible presence hunkering out there in the forest, someone must do something. People must be protected from the Void, and from the things they might do for it, or because of it. Of course this can be the only option, he tells himself. The safest one.

“All right,” Newt says, as he seals the a protective circle around the barn. “Let’s get on with this.”

The house is silent when they return, the shadows deep and the air thick with a presence that Percival has become unwelcomely familiar with over the last few months. He finds himself staying close to Newt, almost clipping the summoner’s heels as they walk, and it’s an unusual sensation for him, to face an opponent that makes him hesitate, to turn to someone else, someone arguably stronger than he is right now. He feels out of his depth and clumsy for it.

“What is this thing?” he asks, almost whispering. “Is it powerful?”

Newt glances at him. “Actually, it’s more bark than bite, which is not to say it’s not unpleasant. It’s what we call an echo shade in the profession. They’re uhm, they’re very low ranked demons, barely sentient really, but they make a lot of noise for their size, hence-” he waves a hand in the air, “all this.”

“How did it get here?” Percival asks. “Is there another summoner around?”

Newt shakes his head, and there’s an element of shifty reluctance to the gesture that makes Percival narrow his eyes immediately. He pauses as they enter the corridor that leads to the back room, then ducks his head, looking sideways at Graves. “Actually, I think this is an after-effect of what Grindelwald tried to do down in the subway. These things, they’re, they’re barely even demons, just shades. Like shadows are to us, and they’re, well, they’re like the water that spills over the side of a cup if you overfill it. They make a mess, but that’s it.”

“But this is more than a spill, Newt,” Percival says, nodding his chin to take in the oppressive weight of wrongness in the house. “And these people, this old lady.”

“Yes, yes I know,” Newt replies, shaking his head and holding up a hand. “I think it’s been here since the subway incident, and it’s done its- its thing. Technically they’re concept shades; just ideas given a smidgeon of sentience. They get inside someone’s head, they latch on to something like a memory, and then they, well they resonate until...until you get this. That’s why they’re called echo shades.”

Percival stares at him in silence. Months. It’s been months since the subway incident. “How many more like this?” he demands. 

“I don’t know,” Newt says. “This is, well, this is unfortunate. Summoners are generally too careful to let something like this happen during a grand ritual, because this kind of thing, well it’s symptomatic of something that’s gone wrong and-”

“How do we fix this, Newt?”

Newt draws in a breath and Percival can see that he’s annoying the man, but he doesn’t need the details right now, he needs solutions. There’s a growing pit in his stomach that’s echoing with the revelation that it’s been  _ months _ and no-one’s caught this. They’re far outside the VISP warding of New York right now, but still this is outrageous. 

“I’m going to exorcise it. I suspect it won’t take long since it’s just a shade, but it’s important we do it carefully because it’s been in that lady’s head for a long time now.” Newt nods to himself, then heads in the direction of the back room, pausing before the closed door. 

There’s nothing but silence from the room on the other side, and that in itself is unnerving. Percival has been taught to expect all manner of horrors from the possessed, but this heavy stillness is not one of them. He waits impatiently at Newt’s shoulder, itching to draw his wand but forcing himself to take his cues from Newt. He’s only ever seen an exorcism the once, and that was carried out by a Phoenix Knight. Although he’s well aware that summoners can also exorcise demons, he’s only ever seen them banish them as free entities, and he has no idea what to expect from what’s to come.

“Her name is Edith, and her daughter says she used to be a dancer when she was young,” Newt says, and Percival spares him a swift sideways glance. The information seems irrelevant to him, but Newt says it as though he ought to take note, and when the summoner looks at him it’s with the wry tolerance of one accustomed to heavy-handed and ignorant outsiders. Even through the menace of this place Percival feels a flicker of embarrassment. 

“She’s been dancing, on and on,” Newt explains. “Getting worse over the months until they had to secure her or risk her hurting herself, or  _ others. _ It’s very much the sort of thing an echo shade does. They creep in, find a memory to latch on to, and then turn it into an obsession, until, well.”

“So how do you exorcise something like that?” Percival asks.

Newt’s answering smile may be humourless, but it’s no less sharp for it. “We’re going to need to borrow the gramophone,” he says. 

  
  


*

  
  


The old woman is silent and eerily still. Percival stands back, his shoulders almost pressed to the wall, and watches Newt work. They’ve cleared the room of its furniture, pushing everything to the sides and into the corners, so that there’s space to conduct the ritual. Newt has placed the woman and her chair in the very centre of the room, and now he’s chalking a complicated set of runes in a circle around her. The woman, or rather, the demon inside the woman, is not watching the summoner though, it’s fixed her eyes directly on Percival. He can feel the burn of its stare on his skin and he has a brief moment of wondering if it’s possible for the thing to jump from the woman to him simply by letting it look him in the eye. No, it couldn’t be, Newt would have warned him if that were the case. Or of course it would already have escaped via one of the other family members. Chiding himself for his nerves, he stands ready to act, wary and uncomfortable.

“Right,” says Newt, pushing himself to his feet to examine his handiwork. “That’ll do it. Can you bring it in please?” 

“Into the circle?” Graves asks, pushing himself upright. When Newt nods, he opens the room’s door, and with a flick of his fingers floats the waiting gramophone in from the hallway and across the room into the wide warding circle that Newt’s drawn. It settles on the floorboards with a gentle thunk. 

“Now, if you’d stay on the outside of the circle please until and unless I call for you, I think it’s time to deal with this,” Newt says.

The shade in the woman is still staring at Percival, but when Newt steps forward into the circle it snaps her eyes up and onto him. Newt smiles grimly at her, and says, “Hello, Edith. I know you’re in there. My name is Newt Scamander, and I’m here to stop all this. If you could just be patient a little longer, it’s almost over now.” He seems to shift the focus of his attention, looking beyond the woman’s face with narrowed eyes. “And as for you, I have something else for you.”

He kneels and reaches for the handle on the gramophone, turning it several times before lifting the tone arm and setting the needle to the spinning record. Music crackles from the horn, fast-paced and with a rhythm to hook the feet and make the toes tap. As soon as the first notes sound the shade’s eyes lock on the gramophone.

Newt straightens and takes out his wand. “May I have this dance?” he asks politely.

The temperature in the room plummets and Percival rolls his shoulders, readying himself as Newt flicks his wand and unbinds the ropes that have kept the woman in place. She stands and there’s nothing of her age in the movements of her body. Percival holds his breath, and Newt holds out his hand, and the shade in her reaches out to take it.

Somewhere in her youth Edith of the little woodcutter’s house in the woods had been a stellar dancer. Whether it’s the demon inside her or her own creativity, when she dances she leaves behind the stately steps of the previous century and dances to the fast stepping moves of the modern dance halls. Watching her, seeing the frailty and thinness of her body, Percival thinks,  _ Merlin be careful. _ Except he’s not sure he even needs to. He remembers what Newt had said about the shade grabbing ahold of a memory and he wonders if it would have gone after any strong desire it found in her heart, because it occurs to him to wonder just how long this woman has wanted to stand up and dance the foxtrot and the Charleston and all those other dances they snap out in the clubs these days, no-maj and magical alike. 

In the midst of the swirl of the music, Newt takes her hand and there among the shadows and the creak of the floorboards, he dances with her. Percival watches as though he cannot look away, at the old woman with her long white hair and her dancing partner the summoner, nothing awkward or self-conscious about him here, not while he works his magic. 

As they dance Percival waits, feeling the air starting to hum along to the rhythm of the music, the steps of the dancers and some beat in the night that pulls at a thread of wildness in him, calling him to dance too. He resists, with all the will of the experienced wizard that he is, but Newt is winding the magic of the casting higher and tighter, making everything thrum with it. The gramophone plays on, long after the record should have ended, and the swing of the music never pauses. 

The dancers circle one another, faster and faster, the steps more complex than before, as though they’re puppets on some unseen strings and all the while Newt is watching the woman’s face, waiting on something Percival cannot predict. He’s never seen an exorcism like this before, isn’t sure he really understands what’s going on. The laws of magic that he knows don’t seem to be in play here and he waits on the outside of the circle, tempted to pace, to move, to dance with them maybe. Instead he stands in silence and stillness until Newt calls on him.

He’s not sure when he notices the first change, but suddenly what his eyes are seeing no longer fully makes sense. Newt is dancing with a woman, and then he’s dancing with two women, or maybe two people. Or perhaps- and here Percival frowns, his hand moving down to the holster of his wand. Edith is encased in something that looks like smoke, like the diaphanous drift of silk underwater, or the slow-motion swirl of a woman’s dress caught in the endless loop of a photograph. Pale and strange it coils around her, sliding across her skin in the opposite direction to the turn of the dance and then suddenly there really is three people dancing - Newt, the old woman and something else, something that moves with an unnatural grace that fools the eye and turns the stomach.

_ “Percival!” _ Newt says, without taking his eyes off the shifting liquid dancer. He still has hold of Edith’s hand, and as he swings her round towards the edge of the warding circle Percival steps forward and reaches out for her. Newt lets go of the old woman’s hand and she falls backwards out of the circle and into Graves’ arms. She’s lighter than a child in his grip and he lifts her away from the edge of the ward, kneeling into a crouch and lowering her carefully to the ground. She’s breathing, but in a swoon as far as he can tell, her pulse flickering wildly beneath the thin skin of her throat. Now he does pull out his wand, and as the music washes over them both he passes the first of what small cleansing spells he knows over her.

In the circle Newt is still dancing. The echo shade, a sinuous, writhing mass of something deeply unpleasant, like the squirm of a nest of worms or the scattering of a swarm of rats, wheels and turns with him. Percival is too busy to note the twisted beauty of it, but Newt’s eyes have not left it once. He has a strange half-smile on his face, something wry and a little bit angry, and then, without warning, he stops dancing. The echo shade continues to whirl around him as though it seeks to encourage him to continue the dance, but Newt holds himself perfectly still, and tilts his chin upwards in defiance. 

Percival winces as the incessant humming at the back of his head intensifies, and he looks up in time to see Newt standing tall in front of the chair, the shade swirling around him, dancing in jagged, jerking form, the slickness of its rhythm gone now that its partner will no longer keep it going. He can see it trying to reach for the summoner, as though it might jump into him next, and for a moment Percival’s breath catches in his chest in alarm, but every time the creature sways close to Newt it draws back as though the strength of the summoner’s denial burns it. Instead it looks for another way to keep itself going, turning its attention to the gramophone sitting at the side of the warded circle. With a whining that sets the teeth on edge, it winds itself faster and faster around the no-maj machine until with a flicker of black light it merges with the mechanism and vanishes. 

Unhurriedly, as though this is nothing but an end to an evening’s light amusements, Newt reaches out and lifts the needle from the record, setting the tone arm back in its cradle. And just like that, the music stops and the creature is gone. 

The silence that follows rings with the emptiness of the room and the laboured breathing of three people. 

Percival stares at him, at the summoner and the silent gramophone sitting there in the middle of the floor. “Is that...it?” he asks cautiously, knowing already from the new lightness in the air and the lifting of the shadows that it must be. 

Newt nods and blows out a sharp breath. He’s sweating from the exertion of the dance and his pale skin is red and flushed. “Yes, that’s it. It’s gone. It was only a weak little thing after all.”

And then he looks to the woman lying in Percival’s arms, and his features draw into a concerned frown. He’s at their side in a few swift steps, crossing the ward and going down on one knee, wand out to check her over. Graves can heal, of course he can heal, but he leans back to let Newt work, trusting in the other man’s expertise to know what’s appropriate right now. The summoner’s face is grim, and the healing he casts is generic and bolstering, enough so that it alerts Percival to the severity of her condition more than any words could. He moves gently, with a softness that Graves has never seen from him before, and he’s struck for a second by how well this man might suit the role of healer.

Newt puts a palm across the woman’s forehead and closes his eyes briefly, concentrating, then he leans in and takes her from Percival’s embrace, lifting her in his arms. He carries her from the room, leaving Percival to look around at the remnants of the exorcism.

“Newt, the gramophone. Should we-?”

“No, leave it. Or put it back in the parlour. Just rub out the circle and put things back, will you?”

Newt’s voice fades and Percival hears his footsteps retreat along the corridor and off into one of the side rooms, a bedroom from memory. He pushes himself to his feet, wondering anew at how different the atmosphere of the house is now that the shade has been banished. That razor-edged whine is gone, and the relief of that alone is enough to lift the spirits. Quickly he rubs out the chalk markings, and then resets the furniture as it was with a wave of his fingers. By the time he’s done the room is once more the tiny neat sewing room it had been previously, untouched by the grimness of the Void, as though nothing so dark had ever or could ever pass this way.

They work swiftly after that. Percival is sent to rouse the family, and by the time he has them back inside the main house and lifted the befuddlement charm, Newt is already waiting in the kitchen. He becomes a doctor then, not a priest, telling the family in the gentlest tones that their grandmother’s fever has passed, but that her frailty is still with her. Although he never says it, they all hear the implications in his words, and when Percival looks at him sharply he can tell that it’s the truth. Then they walk out into the night, their duties discharged, leaving behind a family who remember nothing but a brief spell of illness and know only that they now prepare for the inevitable. 

  
  


*

  
  


Despite the turning of the weather, the early hours of the morning are still full of the cold that can only be found beneath the darkness of trees, and Percival wraps his scarf another loop around his neck. The woods are silent around them, stirring lightly in the softest of breezes, but the menace that lingered between their trunks is long gone. The night and its darkness has returned to peaceful, and the difference between this return to normality and the unreality of the previous hour is enough to almost make Percival’s steps light. Except that Newt’s silence still hangs heavy around them, and Graves is unsure what to do to lift it. 

Newt walks several paces ahead, his shoulders tense and his eyes fixed firmly on the ground as they pick their way back down the dirt track. They could apparate, or side-along, for Percival has a solid grasp on their dingy hotel room’s location, but the summoner stalking down the road ahead of him appears to be in no mood for such a thing. Finding himself somehow reluctant to risk his ire, and perplexed by his mood, yet unwilling to leave him behind out here, Percival simply follows him in silence.

They reach town with dawn still several hours away, and as the faded sign of the hotel draws into sight, Percival takes a firm grip on himself, and blaming the eeriness of this whole night for his lack of certainty, steps up and draws level with Newt. 

“How many more like that?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Newt replies shortly. “Not many I would imagine. These things tend to be noticed.”

“I need to report this back,” Percival says, his mind still full of the fact that it’s been months since anyone found  _ this _ case. Unacceptable. 

“You cannot,” Newt snaps sideways. “If you do that they’ll know where we are, or at least what direction we’ve taken.”

It’s true, but it goes entirely against the grain of Percival’s ethical code. Not to mention that he has a professional duty to report such an incident, and warn MACUSA of the possibility of there being further cases out there. He is not blind to the conundrum this places them in, and the tone of Newt’s retort sparks a flicker of anger in him. “We cannot simply allow these things to slide, Mr Scamander. I have a duty,  _ we _ have a duty, to protect both the magical and the non-magical population from incidents such as-”

Newt stops so sharply that Percival almost walks past him, and leans in close enough that he takes a step away in sheer surprise.  _ “We _ have a duty to track down and apprehend Grindelwald, Director Graves. I believe you understand the importance of that mission.  _ We _ need to stop him before he does anything worse, and right now I believe we are the only ones well placed enough and with sufficient skill to do so.”

Percival straightens, and Newt, who has been holding his gaze throughout this little speech glances down and then abruptly away. He may have broken eye contact, but that does not lessen the intensity of his tone when he continues. “And since we are already being forced to operate in such a strictly covert manner I must assume that the Ministry of Magic in this country currently has enough aurors saturating the local field as to completely ensure the detection of any further disturbances.”

Quite honestly Percival cannot remember a time in which Newt has ever used such a tone on him. There’s anger in the man’s voice as well as something deeper running beneath, something far more raw, and for a second Percival thinks the summoner might be more than simply upset with him. It strikes him all at once that Newt is still suffering from what they have seen this night, not the paltry shade which he exorcised with such simple grace, but the fragile bird-boned old woman who, despite his efforts, may still suffer the most severe consequence of possession. 

_ You really are a gentle soul, _ he thinks to himself. And then,  _ and I am a cold old bastard. _

“Newt,” he says quietly. “I understand, I do understand that.” 

Newt refuses to look at him, his mouth thinned into an angry line, the hand not carrying his ever-present case pressed stiffly into his side. Suddenly unsure how to defuse his anger, Percival turns away, looking around the empty street at the dusty store fronts and the buzzing, flickering street lamps. So far from New York the VISP-warding is non-existent, but the people are considered safe because the population density is so low. Everyone knows demons go where there are the most souls to consume. He closes his eyes briefly. But of course, they have to come from somewhere first, and if they can’t get into New York…

Times like this are strange and new. There hasn’t been a rogue summoner the likes of Grindelwald for centuries, and it would seem that they have forgotten how to act around a threat as deadly as he is. But still, there are procedures and protocols, networks that will activate and which are already awakened. The United States is a vast place, perhaps it’s understandable that something like this might slip through the gaps. He thinks of the old woman’s dancing form, how light she’d felt in his arms when he’d caught her. She could have been his grandmother. The child in that dark kitchen couldn’t have been much older than his niece. He thinks of the expression on Newt’s face as he’d leaned over them both to do what he could against the inevitable. Maybe, if they’d gotten there sooner.

“You’re right. We have to get to Grindelwald first,” he says, shaking his head. When he turns back, Newt is watching him from beneath that ridiculous forelock of his. He looks exhausted and the grief in his eyes is poorly concealed. It makes Percival want to reach out and take him by the shoulders, and what? Lend him some of his own strength perhaps, or perhaps just offer to shoulder the burden in his stead. To tell him none of this is his fault. He doesn’t though, because Newt is stronger than Percival really understands, and because he thinks that were he to do so it might well be a promise he couldn’t even keep. “We’ll catch a few hours sleep and leave at first light.”

Newt drops his gaze and nods. For a moment Percival thinks he might say something else, but then he shakes his head and adjusts his grip on his case. After a moment something appears to occur to him, and he wets his lips briefly. “We need to be careful,” he admits quietly. “Actions like that echo loudly.”

“The exorcism?” Percival asks. He takes a step closer, dropping his chin to try and hook Newt’s gaze. The summoner nods and Percival thinks that there’s a genuine anxiety hiding behind that grief, a type of fear he’s never before seen in the man. “Grindelwald?”

Newt nods. “Yes, amongst others,” he replies softly. “He won’t be alone, Percival.”

When Newt flicks a look at him, wary and uncomfortable, Percival nods his head. He knows full well that Grindelwald has a network of dark mages with whom he works, and it wouldn’t surprise him if they were to rise up in an attempt to protect their master. But dark wizards are all in a day’s work for Percival Graves, and that finally is something he can be confidant of being a match for. More than a match in fact. 

“Allow me to deal with that,” he says. He gives Newt a grim smile of reassurance, and is a little startled by how much the other man seems to appreciate the gesture.

“Yes, all right. Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” Newt says, nodding to himself. He looks exhausted all over again, and Percival is reminded that when he’d roused him earlier he’d still been fully dressed. He wonders exactly how much sleep the man has had tonight. 

“Let’s go inside,” Percival says, eyeing the summoner with just a little concern. When Newt simply nods in response, Percival holds out a hand to indicate that he should lead, and then with the lightest of steadying touches at the small of his back, takes him back inside to the dubious sanctuary of their shabby hotel.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a feeling I'm going to have to break a few more chapters into two, but I guess we'll see. 
> 
> If you want to know the song I was playing while writing this you would probably be disappointed to hear that it was modern electro-swing because that tends to be faster, though in reality they'd most likely have been listening to something from [here](https://youtu.be/JwR-AK0N3FU). Actually I stick that and a bunch of Christmas jazz on whenever I write for Fantastic Beasts because it just seems to set the scene for me. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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